Compass boosts private listings while weighing Open Real Estate
Compass International Holdings CEO Robert Reffkin is not ruling out the possibility that his firm joins national residential real estate data-sharing initiative Open Real Estate.
“We welcome this change. It actually validates what we’ve been saying for the better part of two years, and so we are really excited to see the four of them lead in this way and to see others join,” Reffkin said during his firm’s third quarter 2206 earnings call with investors and analysts Thursday evening.
“In terms of joining or not, I think there’s definitely a path, but Compass International Holdings is definitely excited that there will be a national real estate listing service that will return the power back to the creator of the listing, the homeowner and their trusted agent, and that it’s good news for all agents and for all their clients, and we’re looking forward to seeing if there’s a way for us to be involved.”
Despite his praise for the initiative, which was founded by four of his largest competitors in the brokerage space and aims for fair and equal access to listing data, Reffkin also noted the growth of his firm’s private exclusive inventory.
As of early November, Reffkin said Compass had 89,000 listings on its site users could see on Compass.com prior to them being available to view on public listing portals. Additionally, Reffkin noted that in cities where there are no restrictions on the public marketing of office exclusive listings, on average this week, 63% of newly launched listings in the Compass brand employ its three-phase marketing strategy.
“We also hit over 70% adoption in some of these cities during the quarter, suggesting that as the industry’s artificial restrictions on homeowners and seller choice are removed, the good majority of listings would start off as a private exclusive or coming soon, and be a See It First listing on Compass.com and our sister company sites,” Reffkin said.
During the quarter, the company noted that traffic to its apps and websites was up 53.6% annually, according to data from SimilarWeb, and in September alone, after the launch of Compass’s new See It First offering halfway through the month, traffic was up 68% year over year.
“I would expect traffic to continue to increase as we’ve launched the See It First campaign,” Reffkin said. “The See It First campaign is also part of a rebranding exercise. I think some of our competitors have tried to brand the listings that we have as hidden but clearly, all of our listings are available to all agents and to all buyers. And when you call them ‘See It First,’ then it’s pretty clear we just want you to see it first on our site.”
AI and transaction advantages
In addition, building Compass.com’s inventory of listings comes with some added benefits in the AI-age. According to Reffkin, if you set up a search in a large language model (LLM) and ask it to alert you to any new listings in a given geography, “more often than not” it is providing consumers with Compass International Holdings listings.
“It is the new search alert, For anyone that wonders how are you going to find all the listings, if they’re not all in one site, well, Instinct and Muse prove that it’s just a different search alert. And it brings you to wherever the data comes first and whoever is the original author of the listing, which is obviously the listing agent, not a portal. And then they’re bringing you to listings that have more information,” Reffkin said.
This internal private listing network is also integrated into Compass’s Home platform, which the company is still in the process of rolling out to owned-brokerage agents. Company executives said that as of the end of October, they had successfully onboarded 33,950 agents. They expect to onboard the remainder of the 46,000 owned-brokerage agents by the end of 2026. Additionally, they said that they are on track to roll out the platform to all real estate professionals in their franchise network starting in Q1 2027.
By increasing the number of agents utilizing the platform, Reffkin said they are able to exponentially increase the number of client contacts within Compass’s database.
“We have 225 million unique contacts, and when you give me your listing, boom! It instantly pops up in their saved searches and I could then bring these buyers to your home,” Reffkin said.
Reffkin recounted the story of a Compass agent in Houston who had a client that wanted to relocate to Dallas. With Dallas being in a different MLS, the agent was unable to see MLS listings there, but within the Home platform, the agent could see all Compass International Holdings private exclusives in the city. According to Reffkin, the agent sent these listings to their client and the client ended up purchasing one that was listed by a Sotheby’s International Realty agent.
“That is a transaction that is across geographies and that would not be possible without the home platform,” Reffkin said. “That’s the power of the platform, where it is no longer restricting how people work, but creating much more flexibility and opportunity for the clients of our agents.”
Financial results
In the third quarter, Compass International Holdings recorded an 11.6% annual increase in revenue on a pro forma basis, which assumes it had closed its acquisition of Anywhere on Jan. 1, 2025, to $3.90 billion. The firm’s net income came in at $63 million, up from a $4 million net loss a year ago. This marked the company’s first profitable third quarter. In addition, executives noted the company recorded a 6% annual decline in operating expenses on a pro forma basis.
“This was driven by the strong financial discipline that we’ve instilled into the organization over the past four years, and an acceleration of some cost synergy actions in light of the current environment. As of last week, we have actioned $360 million in net cost synergies compared to the $330 million full-year target for 2026,” Reffkin said. “We shared last quarter, and we remain fully committed to our $500 million-dollar target in
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