Tracy Do leaves Compass for Coldwell Banker Realty

A top-performing Compass agent and her 22-member team has made the leap to Coldwell Banker Realty just a couple of weeks after their former employer announced a 10 percent cut to staffing.

Pasadena-based Tracy Do and her Tracy Do Team consistently rank among top performers in the Southern California market, notching more than $230 million in sales over a recent 12-month period. Do focuses in Pasadena but has closed deals for homes all over the rest of the San Gabriel Valley area as well as the Hollywood Hills and West L.A.

Do worked with Compass since November 2015. She gave high marks to Compass’ technology, a nod to the brokerage’s calling card when it entered the market a decade ago. She said she decided to make the jump to Coldwell for its “more personal and holistic environment,” she said.

“A ‘push of the button’ does not make a successful real estate transaction,” Do told The Real Deal. “These newer brokerages do not fully understand the work, and that is starting to show itself very clearly. A good app is just that, and not all that is needed in this profession.”

“We wish Tracy and her team all the best in their next pursuits, and look forward to continuing to work with them through our Compass agents throughout the Greater Los Angeles area,” Compass said in a statement issued to The Real Deal.

Do is not the only recent agent departure from Compass. The Agency announced earlier this month that five former Compass agents would open a new office in the Northern California town of Los Altos. In the Los Angeles area, Mark Meyer left Compass after working at its Hollywood office since 2018. He moved to Beverly Hills-based Nourmand & Associates in April.
In March, Steve Clark, founder of the Clarkliving team of agents, also based in Pasadena, moved from Compass to Side Real Estate brokerage. He and his group of seven agents left Compass after a six year run, because he felt that the company culture had changed.

“Compass was great for a lot of years––it got bigger and bigger [and] that’s good for some people,” Clark said. “But I like a boutique brokerage,” he said.

Clarkliving notched about $150 million in sales in 2021. It is active in Pasadena and Los Angeles County as well as the desert towns of Joshua Tree, Yucca Valley and Twentynine Palms.

The recent L.A. area agent departures come at a sensitive time for publicly-traded Compass, which has seen its share price swoon in recent months. The company’s June 15 announcement of a layoff of 10 percent of its employees, or 450 people, comes on the heels of the brokerage’s founder and chief executive officer Robert Reffkin announcing in April that there would be temporary pay cuts. Some executives would see their pay cut by 50 percent. Reffkin announced that he would not be taking a paycheck for the rest of the year.

But the company has stressed that its ranks of agents have continued to grow. In May, Compass hired Arthur Meirson, a former Coldwell Global Luxury’s branch manager in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights, to be a sales manager for its Compass San Francisco flagship.

Steven Heravi, a 16-year-branch manager with Coldwell Banker, joined Compass as a managing director for the cities of Calabasas, Studio City, Westlake and Malibu around June 1.

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