From a Leading Community to a Published Authority – REALM RGC Council 2027

“Real estate has never had the client in the room with us as we talk about best practices,” Julie Faupel told members. 

This year, the client side will be there — family office managers, wealth managers, influencers and the decision-makers around principals — turning the Collective, as she put it, into “a bit more of a peerdom than it is a presentation.”

For most of its history, the luxury real estate industry has developed its best practices behind closed doors. Advisors trade notes with other advisors, conferences put experts on stages, and the people the work actually serves — the principals, the family office leaders, the wealth managers who quietly decide who gets the call — are nowhere in the conversation.

REALM intends to change that in 2027. And instead of another conference to recap, the result will be a book.

On this week’s Leading Minds call, REALM Founder and CEO Julie Faupel laid out the platform for the REALM Global Collective 2027, set for May 17–19 at the Four Seasons Hotel Austin: no main stage, twelve working councils, roughly fifty gatekeepers to wealth seated alongside 200 REALM advisors, and a single shared deliverable — a published playbook on luxury advisory, working title The Age of the Trusted. Joining her were two of the people who will help make it real: impact investor Dr. Stephanie Gripne, founder and CEO of the Impact Finance Center, whom Forbes has called “the Steve Jobs of impact investing,” and Justin Branch, Director of Publishing Strategy at Greenleaf Book Group.

“Real estate has never had the client in the room with us as we talk about best practices,” Faupel told members. This year, the client side will be there — family office managers, wealth managers, influencers and the decision-makers around principals — turning the Collective, as she put it, into “a bit more of a peerdom than it is a presentation.”

A playbook that doesn’t exist yet

The idea took shape at REALM’s recent salon in Park City, in conversation with member Paul Benson. Faupel had been asking why the industry had no benchmark — nothing a seller, a buyer, a family office manager or a steward of wealth could pick up to understand what they should expect from a trusted advisor, regardless of market or brand. Benson’s response was simple: was she actually going to write one?

The timing gives the question weight. Faupel pointed to an estimated $124 trillion in wealth set to change hands through 2048, plus some $21 trillion in newly minted wealth that hasn’t been created yet. The stakes for advisors are stark: by the figure she cited, 81% of inheritors part ways with their family’s trusted advisor during the generational handoff. The book is designed to serve both sides of that relationship — a standard for elite advisors, and a guide principals and family offices can use to know exactly what to ask of anyone they trust with their real estate.

Twelve councils, one book

That’s why the Collective has been rebuilt around councils rather than keynotes. Each of the twelve maps to a distinct world of wealth, and each becomes a chapter: Founders & Operators, The Liquidity Moment, Legacy Families, The Inheritors, The Family Office, The Professional Wealth Team, The Global Citizen, Public Figures, Stewards & Philanthropists, The Inner Circle, The House of Luxury, and Developers & Branded Residences.

Every detail is curated. Each council is capped at seventeen REALM members and deliberately balanced across geography, brand and business model. “Council voices” from outside real estate join each room — Faupel described a range running from large institutional advisory Mercer Advisors to boutique firm Planning Alternatives, and from a legacy brand like Beretta to a disruptor like Rivian. Facilitators take every council through the same seven questions so the chapters read as one book, and a ghostwriter in the room captures it all in a single voice.

The questions are pointed. Does a professional wealth team see the real estate advisor as a peer, a vendor or a risk to be managed? When a chief of staff leaves one family for another, does the relationship move with them? Each chapter is built to land on agreed best practices, a real example from an advisor who has put them to work, a dissenting view, honest failures — and, Faupel insisted, some levity, because there’s lightness in this business too.

Councils spend a day and a half working in private rooms before reporting back to the full group, so every attendee walks away with the learnings from all twelve. Aaron, who hosts the weekly call, urged members to choose their councils based on their expertise, not their friends: “Really focus on what you have to bring to the table, because each of you has individual amazing information to share.”

The work also starts long before May. From November through April, a different council will be spotlighted each month so members can get to know its outside voices; contributions will be gathered ahead of the event; and after the Collective, contributors will review their chapter before release. The thinking won’t stop at the book, either — Faupel expects it to feed Journal articles, social content and podcast topics for years.

A preview of who’s in the room

Gripne gave members a taste of the caliber of voice they’ll be working alongside. Trained in forestry rather than finance, she has spent decades “unsticking” capital for communities — more than 1,500 transactions — and now leads the Impact Finance Center, a nonprofit academic center that has built a database of 90,000 impact investors and educates between $1 billion and $10 billion in capital each month. Much of the coming wealth transfer, she noted, is flowing to women and younger heirs who want their investing connected to their philanthropy.

Her advice to advisors: think like matchmakers. “We are trying to understand their stated dreams, and in some cases they have dreams they can’t even say out loud,” she said. She recalled asking one patriarch what he loved and what return he expected; his answer was Jewish federations and 15%, so she found him a way to invest in the former at 16%. Solving for both partners in a couple, she added, is how trust gets anchored for good — and she’ll work with REALM before May to develop persona-by-persona questions and case studies for the book. “When people can achieve their financial goals and their philanthropic goals in the same transaction, magic happens.”

Built to last

Branch explained how Greenleaf — thirty years in business, based in Austin, with 85 New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestsellers — will turn a room full of experts into something readers keep. The ghostwriter will interview contributors for both the prescriptive takeaways and the stories behind them, because, he said, “people learn through stories.” Contributors get their names on the work without having to sit down and write fourteen chapters themselves. The plan is a series: new volumes over time, with a consistent look so they sit together on a shelf.

For members, the most tangible piece may be custom editions — the full book, with a member’s own foreword and branding on the cover, in runs as small or large as they need. Branch called it the kind of book you can hand to a client and that will “set you apart.”

Faupel put it more simply. Picture walking into a client’s living room with that book as a gift. “Who wrote the book on luxury advisory?” she asked. “Well, we did.”

The seats are limited by design — 200 advisors, seventeen per council — because a book meant to sit on a principal’s shelf for years has to be written by the people who’ve earned their place in that room.

REALM members can register for the REALM Global Collective 2027 and select their councils now.

REALM is a private, global membership community connecting leading luxury real estate advisors and independent brokerages through trusted relationships, shared market intelligence, strategic partnerships and meaningful collaboration.