They say if you can’t beat them, join them. For Compass, the adage could be, if you can’t beat them, buy them.
The New York-based national brokerage came in second place in The Real Deal’s 2025 rankings of Chicago residential firms with $5.47 billion in sales in Cook County. But it still got to enjoy the fruits of the $7.85 billion in sales made by the top-ranked brokerage, Chicago’s @properties Christie’s International Real Estate, which Compass acquired at the beginning of this year.
And if Compass’ bid to buy its next biggest national competitor, Anywhere Real Estate, is approved by regulators, it would have ties to four of the top five performing brokerage firms in Cook County this year, either through direct ownership or through a franchise. Those four firms — @properties, Compass, Coldwell Banker Realty and Jameson Sotheby’s International Realty — made about $18 billion in sales volume over the last year, 63 percent of the total volume traded by the top 20 brokerages.
Compass Regional Vice President Fran Broude said industry-wide consolidation was accelerated by last year’s National Association of Realtors settlement that changed how brokers charge commissions.
“Consolidation is not a new thing here. I’ve been around a long time, and I’ve been through consolidation and disruption before,” she said. “It’s kind of normal for the business.”
Even so, the phenomenon in Chicago’s market this year was on a new scale. Compass’ acquisition of @properties was finalized in January, while Baird & Warner announced its merger with tech-focused Dream Town in June. And in September, Compass announced its plans to acquire Anywhere, the national firm that owns big brands like Coldwell Banker, Sotheby’s International Realty and Century 21.
“If you think you’re competitive as an only child, you’re wildly more competitive when you have a sibling.”
The moves made for a seismic shift in the real estate fabric in Chicago, one that the industry rarely sees all at once, said Jim Miller, the president and managing broker at Jameson Sotheby’s.
“All of those would have been monster stories that would have been spread out over a decade and we got them in a matter of 12 months,” he said. “We as an industry are having to learn to pivot, not overreact when changes happen.”
The top 20 brokerages in 2025 tallied a combined $28.6 billion in sales volume this year across 49,947 transactions. That is down from the $29.3 billion in volume and 57,137 transactions traded by the top 20 brokerages in TRD’s 2024 rankings. The list counts both buy- and sell-side deals recorded in the Chicago-area multiple listing service from October 2024 to October 2025, excluding any off-market transactions. The ranking includes only Cook County sales and only residential properties over $100,000.
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Finding an identity
In the increasingly amalgamated landscape of Chicago real estate, each brokerage is facing pressure to better define its brand and prove its value to consumers and agents.
For Thad Wong, co-founder and co-CEO of @properties, the merger with Compass has driven him to be more competitive with the parent company. He said the merger is forcing his firm to hone its value proposition and justify itself as a separate brand from Compass. It increased its volume by about $450 million this year, while Compass lost about $117 million in sales compared to last year.
“If you think you’re competitive as an only child, you’re wildly more competitive when you have a sibling,” Wong said. “So I think the cool part about it locally is that (@properties) being No. 1 and Compass being No. 2, we can compete very heavily with one another, and each side is going to get better.”
Broude said the acquisition went smoothly and Compass was intentional about allowing @properties to keep its brand and leadership.
“Every intention is to keep two separate brands. There are different things about the companies,” Broude said. “They both have very rich cultures, different but very rich cultures.”
Both Wong and Broude said @properties is likely to adopt Compass’ technology suite at some point in the future, but their platforms are currently still separate.
Ayoub Rabah, regional president of the corporate-owned Coldwell Banker Realty, said in the short term, its potential merger wasn’t changing much for the brokerage. Coldwell kept its third place spot in this year’s rankings, making $2.76 billion in sales over 6,257 transactions.
“I’m extremely excited about the announcement and the merger, but what I’m really focused on is serving the end consumer who’s just trying to get into a home today,” he said. He especially tries to find homeownership opportunities and address affordability for the lower end of the market, where many feel priced out of homes.
Some executives at brokerages that are franchised under Anywhere’s brands but owned independently said the merger could bring them the best of both worlds — the tech and network that Compass offers and their independent, local feel.
Coldwell Banker Real Estate Group, a family-owned brokerage that’s one of the Midwest’s largest, made TRD’s rankings at No. 20 this year based on Cook County sales, completing $249.8 million in transaction volume across 517 sales. Should Coldwell Banker come under Compass’ ownership, it could bring capital and better technology to the franchise, president and CEO Mike Prodehl said.
“We have a tech stack now, it’s just fairly antiquated,” he said.
Independents carve out lane
As national brokerage companies pursue consolidation, Chicago’s independent firms view an opportunity to differentiate themselves and promise a local touch for agents and clients.
Baird & Warner, which ranked fourth in this year’s list with $2.43 billion in sales across 4,702 transactions, has gone all in on its homegrown roots, at times jabbing Compass in public communications.
Laura Ellis, chief strategy officer, executive vice president of residential sales at Baird & Warner, said consumers will want to “shop local” with Baird & Warner rather than the “big box stores” of Compass and its affiliates.
“The real estate industry for a long time was sort of looked at as a sea of sameness by agents and consumers,” Ellis said. “What’s happening recently is illustrating that that’s not the case. That the cultures are very different.”
To further stake its claim as Chicago’s local powerhouse, the Dream Town merger nearly doubled Baird & Warner’s presence in the city of Chicago.
Dream Town, which is ranked separately from Baird & Warner in TRD’s rankings, came in at No. 8 with $907 million in volume across 1,644 transactions. Combined, the two brokerages tallied $3.34 billion in volume over the last year.
Another local firm adapting to the shifting market is Fulton Grace Realty. The independent brokerage was ranked 11th in TRD’s list, keeping the same rank as in 2024 and completing $512.8 million in transaction volume.
Fulton Grace acquired Main Street Real Estate Group, which had about 50 agents, in August. TJ Rubin, Fulton Grace’s president and founder, said he expects smaller independent brokerages to continue to join forces to compete with the bigger companies.
“There is a strong value proposition in independent brokerages,” he said. “We can offer big firm resources, with still the family feel.”
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