Top broker Mario Greco jumps to Compass, splitting from BHHS Chicago

Compass has landed Mario Greco, one of Cook County’s top residential brokers who’s exiting Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Chicago after nearly two decades of affiliating with the brokerage.

“I chose to leave because I wanted to take the next step in my group’s evolution,” Greco, founder of the MG Group, said in an interview Friday. “The reason we chose Compass is because their technology platform is really amazing and their market share is increasing.”

Mark Pasquesi, president of brokerage for BHHS Chicago, announced that the company will part ways with MG Group, led by Greco. The firm called it an “amicable separation” and said it will take place this month.

Greco’s MG Group notched the 10th spot in The Real Deal’s ranking of top Cook County brokers last year, with $100.8 million in sales volume across 162 transactions, and it was a top-five team in 2022, with $150 million in sales on 239 deals.

Publicly traded Compass snagged the broker at a critical time for the company, which has been slashing expenses for more than a year in its bid for profitability. It ranked second in Cook County last year with nearly $4.7 billion in sales volume on 7,800 deals, behind locally based @Properties Christies International Real Estate’s more than $7.5 billion on over 12,800 transactions.

“We are excited to welcome Mario and his team to our growing agent network and look forward to scaling his business together, leveraging the industry’s only end-to-end technology to best serve the team’s clients and the greater Chicago community,” Compass’ Fran Broude said in a statement.

Greco called the parting “bittersweet,” saying it took him months to make the decision to leave BHHS Chicago after so many years. 

“In this world of automation and AI, I’ve wanted to automate more of what’s done every day, but keep the human contact that my office staff has with our clients,” Greco said. This would merge the best of both worlds: “long term highly knowledgeable office staff that’s been with me for years” and “more efficient technology that will help us help more people,” he said. 

Greco said the move will empower his group to serve more clients while increasing the quality of service and the work-life balance of his fellow agents and staff, allowing them to “work smarter not harder.” 

He stressed that he still sees BHHS Chicago as a great place to do “high level, high ethics brokerage” in Chicago and around the world, and that this was simply the right next step for his team. The group’s move to Compass will be effective March 20. 

“(Greco) and his team have done thousands of transactions and billions in sales with BHHS Chicago and we are proud to have worked together to help so many people with their Chicago real estate goals,” Pasquesi said in a statement. “We sincerely appreciate that long history and look forward to working cooperatively with (Greco) and the MG Group not only through this transition but in the future as we inevitably cross paths in the market.”

BHHS Chicago boasts a roster of more than 1,300 real estate professionals. The MG Group has provided real estate consulting services to the company since before it acquired Prudential Rubloff Properties in 2013, creating what was then the second-largest residential brokerage in the Chicago market.

“We wish (Greco) and his team well and we know that we will always be supportive of each other’s goals,” Diane Glass, CEO of BHHS Chicago, said in the release.