Anywhere Real Estate ate (HOUS) Risk Factors

We face intense competition in the residential real estate services business, in particular with respect to productive independent sales agent recruitment and retention. Aggressive competition for the affiliation of independent sales agents continues to make recruitment and retention efforts at both Owned Brokerage Group and Franchise Group challenging, in particular with respect to more productive sales agents and in the densely populated metropolitan areas in which we operate. The competitive environment has had, and may continue to have, a negative impact on our market share and may continue to put pressure on our and our franchisees' operating margins and financial results. Competitive pressures for independent sales agents come from a variety of sources, including traditional brokerages as well as newer brokerage models, including discount brokerages, virtual brokerages (and other brokerages that offer the sales agent fewer services, but a higher percentage of commission income) as well as brokerages that provide certain services to agents and agent teams, but with branding focused on the name of the agent or agent team, rather than the brokerage brand. Increasingly, independent sales agents have affiliated with brokerages that offer a different mix of services to the agent, allowing the independent sales agent to select the services that they believe allow them to retain a greater percentage of the commission and purchase services from other vendors as needed. In addition, certain types of compensation that may be appealing to independent sales agents, such as equity awards, may not be available to us at a reasonable cost or at all. These competitive market factors also impact our franchisees and such franchisees have and may continue to seek reduced royalty fee arrangements or other incentives from us to offset the continued business pressures on such franchisees, which has and could continue to result in a reduction in royalty fees paid to us or other associated costs. We expect this highly competitive environment to continue and, accordingly, we and our affiliated franchisees may fail to attract and retain independent sales agents if we are unable to compete in a profitable and effective manner with a combination of continuously improved value propositions and/or commission plans that appeal to a broad base of independent sales agents. If we or our franchisees fail to attract and retain productive independent sales agents or we or they fail to replace departing successful independent sales agents with similarly productive independent sales agents, the gross commission income generated by our company owned brokerages and franchises may decrease, which may have a material adverse impact on our business and financial results. Our franchise business is also highly competitive. Upon the expiration of a franchise agreement, a franchisee may choose to franchise with one of our competitors or operate as an independent broker. Competitors may offer franchisees whose franchise agreements are expiring or prospective franchisees products and services similar to ours at rates that are lower than we charge or a combination of products and services that are more attractive to the franchisee. We also face the risk that brokers may not enter into or renew franchise agreements with us for a variety of reasons, including because they believe they can compete effectively in the market without the need to license a brand of a franchisor and receive services offered by a franchisor, because competitive costs associated with agent recruitment makes affiliation with a brand economically challenging, or because they may believe that their business will be more attractive to a prospective purchaser without the existence of a franchise relationship. Additional competitive pressure is provided by regional and local franchisors as well as franchisors offering different franchise models or services. We expect that the trend of increasing incentives will continue in the future in order to attract, retain, and help grow certain franchisees. For example, to remain competitive in the sale of franchises and to retain our existing franchisees, we have taken and may continue to take actions that result in increased costs to us (such as increased sales incentives to franchisees) or decreased royalty payments to us (such as a reduction in or cap on the fees we charge our franchisees, including lower royalty rates). Taking into account competitive factors, from time to time, we have and may continue to introduce pilot programs or restructure or revise the model used at one or more franchised brands, including with respect to fee structures, minimum production requirements or other terms. If we fail to successfully offer franchisees compelling value propositions, we may fail to attract new franchisees and expiring franchisees may not renew their agreements with us, resulting in a reduction in royalty fees paid to us. Any of the foregoing may have a material adverse effect on our earnings and growth opportunities. As noted in the following risk factor, we and our franchisees also face substantial competition from non-traditional market participants. Competition in our related businesses and the businesses of our joint ventures is also intense. See "Item 1.-Business-Competition" in this Annual Report for additional information.

The Sotheby's International Realty and Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate brands are owned by the companies that founded these brands. Under separate long-term license agreements, we are the exclusive party licensed to run brokerage services in residential real estate under those brands, whether through our franchisees or our company owned operations. Our future operations and performance with respect to these brands requires the successful protection of those brands. Any disagreements or complications in our relationship with, or difficulties in the business or changes in the licensing strategy of, the brand owners could disrupt our business and/or negatively reflect on the brand and the brand value. For additional information see "Item 1.-Business-Franchise Group-Intellectual Property".

Regulators in the U.S. and abroad continue to enact comprehensive new laws or legislative reforms imposing significant privacy and cybersecurity restrictions. The result is that we are subject to increased regulatory scrutiny, additional contractual requirements from corporate customers, and heightened compliance costs as a result of numerous laws, regulations, and other requirements, domestically and globally, that require businesses like ours to protect the security of personal information, notify customers and other individuals about our privacy practices, and limit the use, disclosure, sale, or transfer of personal data. These ongoing changes to privacy and cybersecurity laws also may make it more difficult for us to operate our business and may have a material adverse effect on our operations. For example, we are required to comply with the European Union's GDPR and in the U.S. we are required to comply with numerous federal and state statutes governing privacy and cybersecurity matters such as the CCPA, CPRA and the NYDFS Cybersecurity Regulation. Additional states have enacted their own privacy laws and many other states are likely to implement their own privacy statutes in the near term. See "Item 1.-Business-Government and Other Regulations-Cybersecurity and Data Privacy Regulations" in this Annual Report for additional information. We could also be adversely affected if legislation or regulations are expanded to require changes in our business practices or if governing jurisdictions interpret or implement their legislation or regulations in ways that negatively affect our business, results of operations or financial condition. These ongoing changes to privacy and cybersecurity laws also may make it more difficult for us to operate our business and may have a material adverse effect on our operations. Any significant violations of privacy and cybersecurity laws and regulations (including those involving joint ventures or our third-party vendors or partners) could result in the loss of new or existing business (including potential home buyers or sellers, our corporate relocation or real estate benefit program clients, their employees or members, franchisees, independent sales agents and lender channel clients), litigation, regulatory investigations, the payment of fines, damages, and penalties and damage to our reputation, any of which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations. With an increased percentage of our business occurring virtually, there is an enhanced risk of a potential violation of the expanding privacy and cybersecurity laws and regulations. In addition, while we disclose our information collection and dissemination practices in a published privacy statement on our websites, which we may modify from time to time, we may be subject to legal claims, government action and damage to our reputation if we act or are perceived to be acting inconsistently with the terms of our privacy statement, customer expectations or state, national and international regulations. The occurrence of a significant claim in excess of our insurance coverage in any given period could have a material adverse effect on our financial condition and results of operations during the period.

We engage with third-party vendors and partners in a variety of ways, ranging from strategic collaborations and joint ventures and product development to running key internal operational processes and critical client systems. In many instances, these third parties are in direct contact with our customers in order to deliver services on our behalf or to fulfill their role in the applicable collaboration. In some instances, these third parties may be in possession of personal information of our customers or employees. In other instances, these third parties may play a critical role in developing products and services central to our business strategy. For example, we have partnered with a strategic third party to provide our product suite to affiliated agents, brokerages and franchisees, and these products form an important part of our value proposition to such parties. In addition, we have engaged with another strategic third-party partner on key software development projects and have other strategic projects in place with other third parties. Our third-party vendors and partners may encounter difficulties in the provision of required deliverables or may fail to provide us with timely services, which may delay our projects, and also may make decisions that may harm us or that are contrary to our best interests, including by pursuing opportunities outside of the applicable Company project or program, to the detriment of such project or program. If our third-party partners or vendors were to fail to perform as we expect, fail to appropriately manage risks, provide diminished or delayed services to our customers, experience operational or liquidity concerns (whether related to market downturns or other factors), or face cybersecurity breaches of their information technology systems, or if we fail to adequately monitor their performance, our operations and reputation could be materially adversely affected, in particular with respect to any such failures related to the provision or development of key products. Depending on the function involved, vendor or third-party application failure or error may lead to increased costs, business disruption, distraction to management, processing inefficiencies, the loss of or damage to intellectual property or sensitive data through security breaches or otherwise, effects on financial reporting, loss of customers, damage to our reputation, or litigation, regulatory claims and/or remediation costs (including claims based on theories of breach of contract, vicarious liability, negligence or failure to comply with laws and regulations). Third-party vendors and partners may also fail to maintain or keep adequate levels of insurance, which could result in a loss to us or expose us to litigation. In addition, although we have a Vendor Code of Conduct, we may be subject to the consequences of fraud, bribery, or misconduct by employees of our vendors, which could result in significant financial or reputational harm. The actions of our third-party vendors and unaffiliated third-party developers are beyond our control. We face the same risks with respect to subcontractors that might be engaged by our third-party vendors and partners.

Our trademarks, trade names, domain names and other intellectual property rights are fundamental to our brands and our franchising business. The steps we take to obtain, maintain and protect our intellectual property rights may not be adequate and, in particular, we may not own all necessary registrations for our intellectual property. Applications we have filed to register our intellectual property may not be approved by the appropriate regulatory authorities. Our intellectual property rights may not be successfully asserted in the future or may be invalidated, circumvented or challenged. We may be unable to prevent third parties from using our intellectual property rights without our authorization or independently developing technology that is similar to ours. Also, third parties may own rights in similar trademarks. Any unauthorized or improper use of our intellectual property by third parties, including current or formerly affiliated franchisees or independent sales agents, could reduce our competitive advantages or otherwise harm our business and brands. If we had to litigate to protect these rights, any proceedings could be costly, and we may not prevail. Our intellectual property rights, including our trademarks, may fail to provide us with significant competitive advantages in the U.S. and in foreign jurisdictions that do not have or do not enforce strong intellectual property rights. From time to time, we may update intellectual property used in our business (such as our name change to Anywhere Real Estate Inc. in 2022), which creates transition and increased expense. We cannot be certain that our intellectual property does not and will not infringe issued intellectual property rights of others. We may be subject to legal proceedings and claims in the ordinary course of our business, including claims of alleged infringement of the patents, trademarks and other intellectual property rights of third parties. Any such claims, whether or not meritorious, could result in costly litigation. Adverse outcomes in intellectual property litigation and proceedings could include the cancellation, invalidation or other loss of material intellectual property rights used in our business and injunctions prohibiting our use of intellectual property that is subject to third-party patents or other third-party intellectual property rights. We may be required to enter into licensing or consent agreements (if available on acceptable terms or at all), or to pay damages or royalties or cease using certain service marks, trademarks, technology or other intellectual property. We franchise our brands to franchisees. While we try to ensure that the quality of our brands is maintained by all of our franchisees, we cannot assure that these franchisees will not take actions that hurt the value of our brands or our reputation. In addition, our license agreements for the use of the Sotheby's International Realty and Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate brands are terminable by the respective licensor prior to the end of the license term if certain conditions occur and the loss of either of these licenses could have a material adverse effect on our business and results of operations.

We face growing risks and costs related to cybersecurity threats to our operations, our data and customer, franchisee, employee and independent sales agent data, including but not limited to: - the failure or significant disruption of our operations from various causes, including human error, computer malware, ransomware, insecure software, zero-day threats, threats to or disruption of joint venture partners or of third-party vendors who provide critical services, or other events related to our critical information technologies and systems;- the increasing level and sophistication of cybersecurity attacks, including distributed denial of service attacks, data theft, fraud or malicious or negligent acts on the part of trusted insiders, social engineering, or other unlawful tactics aimed at compromising the systems and data of our businesses, officers, employees, franchisees and company owned brokerage independent sales agents and their customers (including via systems not directly controlled by us, such as those maintained by our franchisees, affiliated independent sales agents, joint venture partners and third party service providers, including our third-party relocation service providers); and - the reputational, business continuity and financial risks associated with a loss of data or material data breach (including unauthorized access to, or destruction or corruption of, our proprietary business information or personal information of our customers, employees and independent sales agents), the transmission of computer malware, cyberattacks, or the diversion of homesale transaction closing funds. In the ordinary course of our business, we and our third-party service providers, our franchisee and company owned brokerage independent sales agents and our relocation operations collect, store and transmit sensitive data, including our proprietary business information and intellectual property and that of our clients as well as personal information, sensitive financial information and other confidential information of our employees, customers and the customers of our franchisee and company owned brokerage sales agents. Third parties, including vendors or suppliers that provide essential services for our global operations, could also be a source of security risk to us if they experience a failure of their own security systems and infrastructure. We increasingly rely on third-party data processing, storage providers, and critical infrastructure services, including but not limited to cloud solution providers. The secure processing, maintenance and transmission of this information is critical to our operations and with respect to information collected and stored by our third-party service providers, we are reliant upon their security procedures, which may not be as robust as our own procedures. A breach or attack affecting one of our third-party service providers or partners could harm our business even if we do not control the service that is attacked. Moreover, the real estate industry is actively targeted by cyber-attacker attempts to conduct electronic fraudulent activity directed at participants in real estate services transactions. These attacks, when successful, can result in fraud, including wire fraud related to the diversion of home sale transaction funds, or other harm, which could result in significant claims and reputational damage to us, our brands, franchisees, and independent sales agents and could also result in material increases in our operational costs. Further, these threats to our business may be wholly or partially beyond our control as our franchisees as well as our customers, franchisee and company owned brokerage independent sales agents and their customers, joint venture partners and third-party service providers may use e-mail, computers, smartphones and other devices and systems that are outside of our security control environment. In addition, real estate transactions involve the transmission of funds by the buyers and sellers of real estate, and consumers or other service providers selected by the consumer may be the subject of direct cyber-attacks that result in the fraudulent diversion of funds, notwithstanding efforts we have taken to educate consumers with respect to these risks. Cybersecurity incidents, depending on their nature and scope, could result in, among other things, the misappropriation, destruction, corruption or unavailability of critical systems, data and confidential or proprietary information (our own or that of third parties, including personal information and financial information) and the disruption of business operations. The potential consequences of a material cybersecurity incident include regulatory violations of applicable U.S. and international privacy and other laws, reputational damage, loss of market value, litigation with third parties (which could result in our exposure to material civil or criminal liability), diminution in the value of the services we provide to our customers, and increased cybersecurity protection and remediation costs (that may include liability for stolen assets or information), which in turn could have a material adverse effect on our competitiveness and results of operations. Our security systems and IT infrastructure may not adequately protect against all potential security breaches, cyber-attacks, or other unauthorized access to personal information, including ransomware incidents. We, our third-party service providers, franchisees, franchisee and company owned brokerage independent sales agents, and joint venture partners have experienced and expect to continue to experience these types of threats and incidents. Cyberattacks have led and will likely continue to lead to increased costs to us with respect to preventing, investigating, mitigating, insuring against and remediating these incidents and risks, as well as any related attempted or actual fraud. Our corporate errors and omissions and cybersecurity breach insurance, or that of applicable third parties, may be insufficient to compensate us for losses that may occur. Moreover, we are required to comply with growing laws and regulations both in the United States and in other countries where we do business that regulate cybersecurity, privacy and related matters. With an increased percentage of our business occurring virtually, there is an increased risk of a potential violation of these expanding laws and regulations. Any significant violations of such laws and regulations could result in the loss of new or existing business, litigation, regulatory investigations, the payment of fines and/or penalties (which may not be covered by cybersecurity breach insurance) and damage to our reputation. Any of the foregoing could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.

Our ability to leverage our technology and data scale is critical to our long-term strategy. Our business, including our ability to attract employees and independent sales agents, increasingly depends upon the use of sophisticated information technologies and systems, including technology and systems (cloud solutions, mobile and otherwise) utilized for communications, marketing, productivity tools, training, lead generation, records of transactions, business records (employment, accounting, tax, etc.), procurement, call center operations and administrative systems. The operation of these technologies and systems is dependent upon third-party technologies, systems and services for which there are no assurances of continued or uninterrupted availability and support by the applicable third-party vendors on commercially reasonable terms. We also cannot assure that we will be able to continue to effectively operate and maintain our information technologies and systems. In addition, our information technologies and systems are expected to require refinements and enhancements on an ongoing basis, and we expect that advanced new technologies and systems will continue to be introduced. We may not be able to obtain such new technologies and systems, or to replace or introduce new technologies and systems as quickly as our competitors or in a cost-effective manner. Also, we may not achieve the benefits anticipated or required from any new technology or system, and we may not be able to devote financial resources to new technologies and systems in the future.

Our business and operations and those of our franchisees are sensitive to general business and economic conditions in the U.S. and worldwide. Contraction in the U.S. economy, including the impact of recessions, slow economic growth, or a deterioration in other economic factors such as potential consumer, business or governmental defaults or delinquencies, could have a material adverse impact on our business, financial condition and results of operations. A deterioration in economic factors that particularly impact the residential real estate market and the business segments in which we operate, whether broadly or by geography and price segments, have and could continue to have an adverse effect on our results of operations and financial results, which may be material. These factors include, but are not limited to: short-term and long-term interest rates, inflation, fluctuations in debt and equity capital markets, levels of unemployment, rate of wage growth, consumer confidence, rate of economic growth or contraction, U.S. fiscal policy (including government spending and tax reform) and related matters (such as debt ceiling negotiations), and the general condition of the U.S. and the world economy. The residential real estate market also depends upon the strength of financial institutions, which are sensitive to changes in the general macroeconomic environment. Weak capital, credit and financial markets, instability of financial institutions, and/or the lack of available credit or lack of confidence in the financial sector could materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations. A host of factors beyond our control could cause fluctuations in these conditions, including the political environment, U.S. immigration policies, disruptions in a major geoeconomic region (such as Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the conflict in the Middle East), changes in equity or commodity markets, acts or threats of war or terrorism or sustained pervasive civil unrest, other geopolitical or economic instability or pandemics and natural disasters (such as the COVID-19 crisis) which could result in market instability, supply chain disruptions and affect the global or US economy, and any of the factors above could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.

Our relocation services business operates worldwide and we have other international operations and relationships, including but not limited to international franchisees and master franchisees. Such operations and relationships are subject to risks that are not generally experienced by our U.S. operations and could result in losses against which we are not insured and have a negative impact on our profitability. Such risks include, but are not limited to, heightened exposure to local economic conditions and local laws and regulations (including those related to employees, privacy and data storage, and other compliance issues, including sanction programs), fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates, and potential adverse changes in the political stability of foreign countries or in their diplomatic relations with the U.S. In addition, the activities of franchisees and master franchisees outside of the U.S. are more difficult and more expensive to monitor and improper activities or mismanagement may be more difficult to detect.

Owned Brokerage Group has a significant concentration of offices and transactions in geographic regions where home prices are at the higher end of the U.S. real estate market, particularly the east and west coasts. Coastal areas, including California and Florida, are particularly subject to severe weather events (including hurricanes and flooding) and natural disasters. Increasingly, wildfires in the west have been difficult to contain and cover large areas. The occurrence of a severe weather event or natural or man-made disaster can reduce the level and quality of home inventory and negatively impact the demand for homes in affected areas, which can disrupt local or regional real estate markets, delay the closing of homesale transactions and have an unfavorable impact on home prices, homesale transaction volume, relocation transactions, and title closing units. These effects may be compounded when the taxes or insurance costs associated with homeownership in the affected area are higher than average or the cost of such insurance materially increases in connect with the increasing frequency and severity of weather events or other disasters. In addition, we could incur damage, which may be significant, to our office locations as a result of severe weather events or natural disasters, and our insurance may not be adequate to cover such losses. The impact of climate change, such as more frequent and severe weather events and/or long-term shifts in climate patterns, exacerbates these risks. Likewise, our business and operating results could suffer as the result of other catastrophic events, including public health crises, such as pandemics and epidemics. For example, the COVID-19 crisis contributed to material reductions in relocation volume and significant homesale transaction volume volatility in 2021.