An oft-repeated piece of lore about Compass CEO Robert Reffkin is that he personally calls every agent on his or her first day at the brokerage.
That might be a little harder now that he’s leading an international holding company overseeing about 340,000 agents after Compass closed its $4 billion acquisition of Anywhere Real Estate, which owned such firms as Corcoran, Coldwell Banker, Century 21 and Sotheby’s International Realty.
But that hasn’t stopped Reffkin from shaking as many new hands as possible in a post-merger victory tour of his freshly acquired brokerages, which he’s captured all of on Instagram as if to say, “Look at all my new friends!”
Reffkin’s rise to the most popular — and arguably the most powerful — man in the industry came faster than anybody could have guessed as little as three years ago, when Compass was undergoing its third round of layoffs to stem the flow of money going out the door.
At that point, the antitrust lawsuit against the National Association of Realtors was still winding its way through the courts, private listings were relegated to the shadows and Compass’ claims that it was a technology company disrupting the brokerage world were often derided by the competition.
But behind the scenes, Reffkin has deftly maneuvered his way through real estate’s crumbling center of power and cooled antitrust concerns to put himself in pole position in the industry.
Now, the rest of the industry is holding its breath for what comes next. Reffkin has made it clear that he doesn’t just want to be the number one brokerage in the country, but the number one real estate destination.
“I don’t think other brokerages keep Compass awake at night,” said Serhant CEO Ryan Serhant. “I think Zillow does.”
Who wins and loses in the next phase of Compass and Zillow’s battle is up for debate, but according to NextHome CEO James Dwiggins,“this industry will look significantly different in the next 36 months.”
A power vacuum
None of whatever Reffkin does next would be possible without the disintegration of major institutional roadblocks.
In the wake of the antitrust settlement that kneecapped NAR’s influence in the industry, Reffkin seized the opportunity to become one of the group’s loudest critics, publicly and privately lobbying the group to alter one of its remaining powerful policies, the Clear Cooperation Policy, which required brokerages to submit their listings to the MLS — a 2019 rule that Reffkin claims was created in response to Compass’ efforts to expand its off-MLS listing network.
As legal battles chipped away at NAR, Reffkin publicly embarrassed the group when he announced in July that his company’s official stance would be to simply ignore the Clear Cooperation Policy.
But Reffkin ultimately saw size as the ultimate trump card. “If we had twice the market share in all of our markets, you can’t bully us anymore,” Reffkin told Compass leadership on a May call, referring to organizations like NAR, as well as Zillow.
“I don’t think other brokerages keep Compass awake at night. I think Zillow does.”
Compass achieved that goal, and it shifted power “from one trade group monopoly to one significantly-sized company in the ecosystem,” according to housing analyst Jonathan Miller.
Zillow, which attracts hundreds of millions of users every month, tried to re-balance the scales, announcing its threat to ban listings that didn’t appear on the MLS or Zillow. Compass responded by suing Zillow over the policy, and the two sides are awaiting a result on Compass’ request for a judge to install a temporary ban on the policy before a trial likely begins sometime later this year.
But the result may become moot after Compass’ deal for Anywhere, which some have estimated will give the combined company a market share as high as 80 percent in certain metro areas.
Even if Zillow’s ban remains in place, Compass now has the inventory to position itself as another website consumers will need to trawl for homes.
“Robert is the kingpin,” said RLTYco Chief Housing Analyst Ricky Carruth. “He can drive more traffic to his website for the private listings that are basically there and nowhere else.”
A major deal with minor pushback
Similar to how Reffkin grew loudest when NAR was at its lowest point, he lined up his biggest deal under a far more persuadable administration.
Compass hired Mike Davis, an attorney close to President Donald Trump who has helped lobby the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission to push through major deals like Hewlett-Packard’s proposed acquisition of Juniper. Although the Trump nominee for head of the DOJ’s antitrust division has a hardline antitrust history, Davis has made inroads in other parts of the department, and he was a major factor in convincing Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche that the merger did not require an investigation, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, who’d previously urged the DOJ and FTC to look closely at the merger over fears that the deal could limit transparency and inflate consumer costs, claimed that “the Trump administration has rubber-stamped a deal” that will further harm affordability.
RealTrends founder and M&A advisor Steve Murray didn’t fault Reffkin for his maneuvering through the system. “I’d want the best people,” he said of hiring Davis. “[Reffkin] is a pretty smart guy.”
Murray admitted that Compass’ market share in certain markets, which an analysis from the regulatory outlet the Capital Forum estimated to be as high as 80 percent in such places as Manhattan, left him surprised that there wasn’t more scrutiny. “That’s where most of us thought there might be some concern,” he said.
What comes next for Compass
Reffkin has not been shy about what he wants next for Compass, which now exists as one of the many brands under Compass International Holdings. The day the merger was announced, he published an open letter to the 340,000 agents at the company with the subheading “Our Plan.”
“We believe real estate portals should be centered around those who actually create the listings: real estate professionals,” he wrote. “We will build a premier destination of brokerage-led sites where leads go to the listing agent.”
“We believe real estate portals should be centered around those who actually create the listings: real estate professionals. We will build a premier destination of brokerage-led sites where leads go to the listing agent.”
For Reffkin, the new scale provides a chance for a first: a full-year profit. The brokerage has lost more than $1.5 billion just running itself over the last four full years, and even in what has been its strongest financial nine months to date, Compass was still in the red almost $20 million through the first nine months of 2025.
An expanded private listing network is expected to juice agent recruitment, which may prove enticing enough to still allow Compass to slowly lower its fee splits and up fees for services, according to Jonathan Miller.
But Reffkin will still need to navigate steering a now-massive operation toward profitability with a balance sheet holding nearly $3 billion in debt. “I don’t see a clear path to a retirement of this debt within a concise period of time,” said LPT International CEO Michael Valdes. “With that, there comes a lack of agility.”
The next moves
Compass’ deal for Anywhere is likely the first move of many: check, not checkmate.
Although preemptive federal scrutiny did not materialize, several states have already seen legislators put forward bills to curtail private listings. Lawmakers in Wisconsin and Washington state have both put forward bills that would curtail private listings (Wisconsin’s law passed at the end of the year).
A state-led regulatory effort would likely lead to a patchwork of laws around the country for Compass and other national brokerages to navigate. The more formidable counterbalance to Compass is another large brokerage or two, which many think we’ll see sooner rather than later.
“I have no doubt that you will see big companies get bigger, and it becomes what I call two ends of the spectrum,” Dwiggins said, one end being the mega-companies controlling a large amount of the market and the other being small independents that are heavily listings-focused. “Anybody in the middle gets wiped out,” he said.
Serhant, who runs one of the independent brokerages that Compass dwarfs, doesn’t see Reffkin’s rapid ascent as necessarily harmful.
“Consolidation is normal. It happens in every mature industry,” Serhant said. “It doesn’t actually mean something good or bad for the industry or for the customer, it just means the industry is still searching for its next operating model.”
Some in the industry see consolidation as an opportunity for brokerages to band together and reclaim their inventory from platforms like Zillow. “[Brokers] are no longer going to give their data away for free and then have a third party come in and then sell it back,” said Marx Sterbcow, a real estate attorney in Louisiana.
A world in which brokerages charge Zillow and others for access to their data may not look so different than it does today, just with the scales tipped ever so slightly in brokerages’ favor. But if Compass manages to popularize its private listing network to the point that Zillow is missing out on substantial inventory, all bets are off, according to Dwiggins.
“If they lose 15 to 20 percent of inventory, you don’t think Zillow is just going to make the full move to brokerage,” Dwiggins said, admitting that he’s been called a “conspiracy theorist” for the idea.
But only three years ago, it was inconceivable that Compass would be buying Anywhere. But success isn’t guaranteed, and a fellow giant — like Zillow — could make a play for its lead if Compass makes “one chess move in the wrong direction,” Dwiggins said.