Ryan Schneider: Well, I wouldn’t say the 2.5% rate is standard. I mean, there’s a pretty wide variation when you look across our portfolio. But putting that aside, to your question, I would say no, but I would actually start in a different place. And I ask this question to agents all the time, which is, what are they hearing from their customers? And while there’s a big increase in press on this topic, clearly, other than the days that the stuff shows up in a Wall Street Journal or New York Times, it doesn’t get much consumer attention is what I’m hearing. Obviously, there’s a lot in the trade press that we all see and deal with everything. So, for example, I was at one of our Coldwell Banker Realty offices, I don’t know, 10 days ago, and I’m meeting with like 20 of our agents who were kind of the high-end award winners for their 2023 results.
And I asked them that question. How many of you have had customers ask you about these commission news or lawsuits? And it was very few hands went up and it was, yes, I got one question or whatever kind of thing. I talked to another agent in Denver or emailed with her about she’s had like four people that she’s addressed it with kind of thing. So yes, I don’t think it has like really gotten into the water in a way that has led to anything meaningfully changing yet. And that doesn’t mean we don’t watch it closely, and it doesn’t mean we’re not, as the earlier question asked, thinking very strategically about the future. But I don’t think it’s really, like I said, kind of in the water yet in a way that’s actually leading to anything.
On the flip side, though, we want to be ahead. We want to be innovators. We’re big users of buyer agent agreements, and we’re going to be expanding that dramatically. And part of the reason we’re doing that is we got ahead on this settlement thing. And so we kind of got a head start in doing that, we think. And so it’ll be, like I said in my script, there’s a lot going on here, but we’re going to keep being proactive, thinking about it, and hopefully the kind of strategic thinking and execution that led us to carve out a different position with the first nationwide settlement here gives you a little confidence that we’ll be thinking strategically about these other topics and will hopefully steer us to better outcomes than a lot of our competitors are getting.
Tommy McJoynt: Got it. Thanks, Ryan.
Operator: Your next question comes from John Campbell with Stephens Inc. Please go ahead.
John Campbell: Hey, guys. Good morning.
Ryan Schneider: Hi, John.
John Campbell: Hey. So it was obviously encouraging to hear about the momentum you guys saw, kind of exiting 2023, and then obviously the growth and closed volumes in January. I’m hoping Ryan maybe provide a little bit more color on the sides and price mix, and then maybe to what extent you can just talk to the open listings activity and what that’s signaling as far as units and price? I’m guessing that was probably pretty similar to what you probably saw in the closed activity, but any kind of call outs there?
Ryan Schneider: Yes. When you look at like December and January this time, I was quoting, both units and price were up. In one of the months I think price is up a little more than the units were, but we hadn’t seen units up in a long time. In fact, I think I said we hadn’t had open volume be up since December 2021. We hadn’t had units be up year-over-year since May of 2021, and then they were up in December. And so the up in both December and January was a little bit kind of both. But like I kind of said, like in January, I think the price was up, whatever, 5% or 6%, and the units were up 3% kind of thing. So it’s a mix of both. But it’s also, like I said, with units being up, we hadn’t seen that for 2.5 years kind of thing.
So that’s encouraging. And then, like I mentioned, listings are kind of flat in like Q4 year-over-year, but they’re up in the places that were strongest. We saw them up 5% in the $750,000 to $1 million range. We saw them up 4% in the $1 million to $5 million range. And that was – those numbers are better than the rest of our portfolio and kind of better in the market. And then we’re also seeing about 40% of our listings sold either at or above list price in December, 34% of our listings went under contract in two weeks or less, and last year was 33%. And in previous years, it was like in the 20s kind of percentages kind of thing. And then cancellation rates for us dropped in Q4, a couple of points versus 2022. So there’s – we’re on a low base here, but there’s some green shoots here that gave me the optimism to say what I said in the script.
John Campbell: Yes, that all sounds great. I appreciate all that color. And then maybe for Charlotte here, I know it’s early. A lot is going to obviously depend on the level of volumes and then also the working cap swings you guys are going to see from Cartus. But maybe if you could talk to your expectations for free cash flow conversion off of EBITDA. I know in the past you guys have kind of mentioned 25% to 55% conversion range. Is that still a good kind of rule of thumb to consider?
