By Tim, Julie, Dan, Chris, Kacie and Orlando · April 16, 2026
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Most agents say they want to move into luxury real estate.
Few actually do anything about it.
The ones who do don't get there by wishing harder or suddenly deciding to wear nicer clothes to open houses. They get there through a deliberate set of moves — specific actions taken in specific markets that position them, over time, as the only logical choice for high-net-worth sellers.
On this week's Powerhouse Talk, eXp Realty top producers who have actually made the move up market broke down exactly how they did it. No theory. No fluff. Just the insider playbook — the one most agents never hear.
Secret #1: Go Where the Money Actually Is — Not Where You Think It Is
The first mistake agents make when trying to break into luxury: they keep doing what they've always done, just hoping a fancier client shows up.
Chris Heller's approach is surgical.
Change the neighborhoods you're farming. If you've been farming a $400K–$600K market, identify the $1M–$3M neighborhoods in your area and start farming those instead. The mechanics are identical — postcards, door knocking, market updates — but the commission at the end is three to five times larger.
Change where you're prospecting FSBOs and expireds. Run those searches in your target luxury zip codes, not your comfort zone. The expired opportunity in the upper end is enormous right now — especially with only 50–60% of listings currently selling nationally.
Change where you physically spend your time. This is the one most agents overlook entirely.
"Upper end people are 100% getting referrals from each other for every single thing. They don't go to advertising. They don't go to social media. They go to the gym. They go to private Facebook groups and WhatsApp groups. That's how they make every decision — including which agent to call."
Find out where the people in your target neighborhood actually congregate. The specific gym. The country club. The private parent group. The neighborhood association meeting. Show up there as a genuine participant, not as someone passing out business cards.
Julie added a real example: her neighborhood ladies' WhatsApp group had 63 messages in a single morning. At least half were recommendations — people asking who to call for services, contractors, schools, everything. The agent who is known in that group gets those calls. The one who isn't doesn't exist.
Secret #2: Build the Hyper-Local Newsletter — Then the Podcast
Tim's strategy takes Chris's community presence concept and scales it with AI.
The play: become the undisputed expert voice for the neighborhood you want to dominate.
Step 1: Join the private groups. Find every neighborhood-specific Facebook group, WhatsApp thread, Nextdoor community, and HOA forum for your target market.
Step 2: Use AI to monitor the conversation. Let it identify the recurring topics, questions, debates, and concerns coming up in those communities week after week. What are people worried about? What do they keep asking? What local news matters to them?
Step 3: Build a newsletter around those conversations. Not a generic real estate newsletter — a hyper-local community publication. The Lighthouse Point Insider. The Del Ray Beach Weekly. Whatever fits your market. The content comes from what your target community is already talking about. You're not guessing what they care about. You know.
Step 4: Go back to the groups and invite people to subscribe. You're not selling real estate. You're offering something genuinely useful to the community. The credibility transfers.
Step 5: Launch the podcast. Start interviewing the most influential people in the neighborhood — the HOA president, the longtime residents, the business owners, the local historians. You become the connector. The go-to. The person every important person in the community has sat across from.
"You're always talking about what they're talking about — because the AI is monitoring whatever's in the zeitgeist. You never run out of relevant content. You never feel out of touch."
The listings follow. They always do.
Secret #3: Show Up in Person — Relentlessly
Kacie Anderson took a different route into Lighthouse Point — one of South Florida's most prestigious communities, with homes ranging from $700,000 starter properties all the way up to $27 million waterfront estates.
She didn't have a connection there. She didn't have a referral. She just showed up.
Door knocking with a purpose. Kacie scoped out the streets before she knocked. She knew which houses fit her target demographic, which ones looked like they might be ready to move, and where her builders and developers would want to buy. She didn't knock randomly — she knocked strategically.
Events that open doors without the sales pitch. Free photos with Santa. Coffee vouchers — $5 gift cards to the local coffee shop, nothing extravagant. Simple gestures that gave people a reason to stop, smile, and remember a face.
Community visibility that compounds. Kacie sponsored sports programs. Her banners went up on fences around local fields. She showed up at the park with her kids. She attended the neighborhood events. She was present — consistently, over time — in all the places where the people she wanted to serve actually lived their lives.
"People started seeing my face everywhere. And then it just started converting into conversations — 'Oh, I see you everywhere. Let me tell you, my sister's moving here.'"
One afternoon, a broker answered a door and told Kacie — directly and not politely — that there were four realtors who handled that neighborhood and she was not one of them.
Kacie thanked her, wished her a great day, offered to have coffee if she ever wanted to talk about joining a growing team, and moved on to the next house.
She got three listings on that street.
That broker showed up at Kacie's broker open shortly after. Gave her credit where it was due.
Secret #4: Use the Builder Strategy to Manufacture $3M Listings
Dan Lesniak's path into luxury didn't start with a referral or a farm. It started with builders.
Here's the exact playbook:
1. Interview three or four builders. Take them to coffee. Ask them about their buy box — the specific criteria, price range, and neighborhood characteristics they look for in an infill project. Understand exactly what they want to buy.
2. Run tax record searches for their ideal targets. You're looking for two things: long length of ownership and a high ratio of land value to improvement value. That combination tells you the house is old enough to demo or gut-renovate, on land that's worth significantly more than the structure sitting on it. That's the builder's dream acquisition.
3. Market aggressively to those homeowners. Direct mail. Phone calls. Door knocks. Your pitch is simple: "I'm working with multiple builders. I can bring you a solid, non-contingent cash offer with a free rent-back period." The rent-back matters — builders are typically in no rush because the permitting process takes months. The seller can close and stay in the house while they find their next place.
4. Control the new construction listing. Once the builder acquires the land, you represent the new construction sale. A $3M new construction home can be pre-marketed for 12 to 18 months. Hard hat open house tours. Major launch event when it's done. Every marketing moment generates leads — move-up buyers, sellers in similar neighborhoods watching the project, investors. One deal creates a pipeline.
"You can market a $3 million home for 18 months. That gives you a lot of leads during that period — and you'll get the sale at the end."
The Mindset That Makes It All Work
Every strategy above has one thing in common.
None of it can be outsourced to a portal. None of it requires a paid lead. None of it involves hoping someone fills out a form on Zillow and picks you.
It's all built on presence, consistency, and the kind of trust that only comes from showing up — in person, over time, in a community you've chosen to genuinely serve.
Tim closed the segment with the story of Lisa McKeveren, a ReMax broker in Granville, Ohio. Visibly pregnant, brand new to real estate, no connections and no experience, she knocked on every door in the town.
Within two to three years she was the number one listing agent in the community. She held that position for decades. Her daughter sent Tim an email after he told the story on a podcast — moved that someone still remembered her mother's legacy that way.
"Going door to door and being person to person is where the money has always been made in this business. In this day of AI, it's where it will always be made."
The agents who understand that — who use AI to scale their research and content while showing up in person to build the relationships — are the ones who will win the luxury market in their area.
Not this year. Starting this week.
Your Three-Step Move-Up Action Plan
1. Pick your target neighborhood now — not someday. The specific zip code, the specific community. Name it.
2. Choose your entry strategy — community farming, the hyper-local newsletter, events and door knocking, or the builder infill play. Pick one and commit to 90 days.
3. Find where your target clients actually spend their time — the gym, the private groups, the local events — and show up there genuinely, not transactionally.
The luxury market isn't guarded by a secret handshake. It's just occupied by the agents who showed up before you did.
That changes the moment you decide to go.
▶ Watch the full episode https://youtu.be/YkmgGAcO6Yk?si=_8ujz5xEvBvmo4mM
— Tim, Julie, Dan, Chris, Kacie and Orlando
Hosts, Power House Talk
whylibertas.com/harris
whylibertas.com/dan
whylibertas.com/chris-heller
whylibertas.com/kacie-anderson
whylibertas.com/orlando-montiel
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