RE/MAX Premier Acquires North Shore Compass Offices

Compass is selling five North Shore offices to RE/MAX Premier, giving the RE/MAX brokerage a foothold in suburban Chicago’s luxury market.

RE/MAX Premier is acquiring Compass offices in Glencoe, Glenview, Highland Park, Lake Forest and Winnetka, the brokerage announced this week. The lakeshore towns sport multimillion dollar mansions and boast some of the highest prices around Chicago. Winnetka, for example, was the site of the most expensive home sale in Chicagoland’s history this week, when an offer of more than $31 million closed for 419 Sheridan Road.

The sale of the Compass offices comes less than a year after Compass acquired @properties Christie’s International Real Estate, making the combined business by far the largest brokerage in the Chicago area. @properties has offices in each city where RE/MAX Premier is rebranding Compass offices.

Founded in 2011 by CEO Janice Corley, RE/MAX Premier currently has five offices between Chicago and Houston, Texas. The new acquisition will double its office space and give it exposure to the high-end real estate that makes up the North Shore.

As the buildings change hands, it remains to be seen what will become of the more than 200 agents that work at the five Compass offices. As independent contractors, agents generally have freedom to move brokerages within their contracts’ terms.

Tamara Edwards, Corley’s spokesperson, said the agents at the offices aren’t required to move to RE/MAX Premier as part of the deal and it hasn’t been determined how many will join the brokerage once it sets up shop in the offices. Several Compass agents at the offices reached by phone declined to comment on the deal.

“They can stay at the brand that they would like, and if they’d like to come over to RE/MAX, that’s obviously an option,” Edwards said.

Edwards said Corley wants to hire 500 agents to staff the brokerage’s new North Shore operations going forward.

RE/MAX and Compass did not share the financial details of the deal.

For Compass, the decision to shed the offices was part of an effort to cut down on its brick-and-mortar presence in the North Shore after its purchase of @properties, a Compass source told The Real Deal. The person said Compass will continue to serve North Shore clients through its nearby offices.

Corley pitched the purchase as bringing control of the offices from a national firm to local ownership. RE/MAX operates under a franchise model, in which brokerages like RE/MAX Premier are owned and operated independently.

The RE/MAX business model gives agents more autonomy and is an alternative to “many real estate companies today that are owned by venture capital or hedge funds with no local presence,” Corley said.

Her push into the North Shore comes as Chicago-area residential brokerages increasingly consolidate to scale up their reach, with an eye on maximizing their luxury clientele. Following the Compass purchase of @properties, Baird & Warner responded by acquiring Dream Town Real Estate in Chicago.

The former Compass offices will be part of The RE/MAX Collection, RE/MAX’s luxury division. They will begin transitioning to the RE/MAX brand over the next month.

Compass has made an aggressive push to increase its market share in Chicago, and nationally, in the last few years through acquisitions of major brokerages and teams. When it purchased @properties last year, co-CEOs Thad Wong and Mike Golden said the two brokerages would continue to operate as separate business units with separate branding.

Compass reported all-time records across 10 metrics in its second-quarter earnings call this year, including net income, revenue and market share. It brought in more than $2 billion in revenue and grew its national market share to 6.09 percent.