What Compass’ Deal With Redfin, Rocket Means

Compass’ fourth-quarter earnings call this week came with more than bottom-line metrics.

The company announced a three-year partnership with Rocket and Redfin. The “strategic alliance,” as Compass called it, includes a number of moving parts, is a landmark move by the brokerage, creating an off-MLS, off-Zillow listing platform for its exclusive listings with a built-in user base.

It’s doing so by syndicating its off-MLS listings exclusively to Redfin’s portal, beginning with its “Coming Soon” listings, which were previously only publicized on Compass.com. Consumers working with Compass agents will also benefit from preferential pricing on mortgages through Rocket.

The deal comes after both sides have gone through significant consolidations. Compass paid $1.6 billion in stock for Anywhere Real Estate in January and Rocket closed on its $1.75 billion deal for Redfin last July.

The partnership between Rocket, Redfin and Compass appears to be the most seamless combination to date of the components that make up a consumer’s home-buying journey: the home search portal, the brokerage, and the mortgage provider.

The end-to-end ecosystem is, as real estate analyst Mike Del Prete has called it, the “holy grail of real estate.”

During the earnings call, Compass CEO Robert Reffkin didn’t hold back on describing the deal, saying, “This changes everything.”

But questions remain on what will change for agents and listings, how Compass has moved closer to grasping that golden chalice, and what could get in its way.

A differentiated home search portal

Reffkin has talked about building a platform to compete with industry behemoth Zillow, but the idea that consumers would start typing in Compass.com to look for homes always seemed a little far-fetched.

By integrating with Redfin, Compass is tapping into an existing user base. In the first three quarters of 2025, Redfin clocked nearly 50 million average monthly users. Compass thinks those eyeballs will convert into 1.2 million “high-intent” leads over the three-year partnership.

But in the race for market share, there’s still a lot of ground for any portal to make up. Zillow reported 227 million average monthly users in that same period.

The partnership also gives Redfin a stronger argument for consumers that it has something Zillow can’t offer — Compass’ exclusive inventory. And that offer has become more compelling after the brokerage closed a deal to merge with Anywhere Real Estate, and its umbrella of brands including Corcoran, Coldwell Banker and Century 21. Compass has estimated Redfin could gain 500,000 homes on its platform through the partnership.

Leads going to Compass

Compass has managed to protect its leads through this partnership — and come one step closer to boxing out platforms trying to siphon away business.

As part of the arrangement, Compass agents will be prominently displayed on the Redfin listings and leads generated from the home will go to Compass agents — either the listing broker or into Compass’ newly-created referral network.

Zillow has held on to its industry lead by effectively restricting brokerages’ ability to make money — it’s reduced their ability to double-end deals and takes a cut out of commissions.

Compass initially solved that problem on a smaller scale with its “Coming Soon” and “Private Exclusive” listings, which allowed it to better control lead flow and cut Zillow out of the equation. Now, it’s apparently managed to scale that process in one press release.

The mortgage piece

Portals and brokerages have struggled to integrate ancillary services like mortgage and title, despite executives posing the streams of business like a cash cow waiting to be milked.

The selling point that brokerages formerly offered was “ease” of a streamlined mortgage process — something that was not “solving an actual problem for consumers,” Del Prete said during a presentation he made last fall.

“But if you bundle and save, that’s different,” he added.

Bundling and saving is exactly what Compass and Rocket are now offering buyers. Through the partnership, buyers can receive one percentage point off their mortgage rate in their first year or up to $6,000 in lender-paid credits by using Rocket Mortgage.

How that helps Compass’ bottom line is not yet clear, but keeping consumers within its Rocket-Redfin-Compass ecosystem will likely present opportunities to monetize them and increase lead conversions.

Who will stop them?

Reffkin squarely claimed the partnership as a win in his mission to upset the listings status quo.

“With the Rocket Redfin partnership and the efforts I expect Compass and Rocket to take, I’m confident that MLSs and Zillow will no longer be in a position to force brokerages to make their proprietary data public,” he said.

In his estimation, the current scaffolding keeping listings flowing to all portals and brokerages is coming down. But it’s not clear how true that is.

It can’t be underestimated how many more eyeballs Zillow gets than any other residential platform in the country. Sellers may still wonder why their home is not on Zillow, and explaining to them that it’s because potential buyers will be funneled back to Compass agents is not going to cut it.

The partnership may also only add to the clamor for more regulatory oversight of Compass. After the Department of Justice greenlit the merger months ahead of schedule, lawmakers urged the department for the second time to review the deal.

“This decision raises questions about corruption under your watch and its impact on housing affordability for American families,” a group of lawmakers wrote in a letter last week, citing internal strife in the department. “Allowing this merger will make it easier for these firms to exert greater control over the real estate market, limit consumer access and choice and ultimately exacerbate the housing crisis that has put homeownership out of reach for millions of Americans.”

As part of the deal, Redfin will not publish days on market or price drops — two metrics that housing analyst Jonathan Miller called essential to price discovery in a note he published on the deal this morning.

“Price discovery around publicly marketed listings is “sacred” because it underpins the perceived fairness of the entire housing system in a way that private channels can’t replace,” he wrote.

Reffkin, who has dissed the metrics as “killers of value,” pitched these changes as good for the market. During the earnings call, he claimed that home values suffer from negative insights and inventory could rise if sellers are not afraid of harming their potential prices.