Pam Liebman is putting her money where her mouth is.
The president and CEO of Corcoran bet Brown Harris Stevens CEO Bess Freedman $1 million that her brokerage will remain a distinct brand for years to come, despite its former parent company merging with Compass earlier this year.
Liebman made the wager while on stage at The Real Deal’s annual New York Forum on Wednesday, after Freedman said the acquisition would create “a lot of sameness” between the brokerages now under the Compass umbrella, including Corcoran, Sotheby’s International and Coldwell Banker.
“You guys are now owned by Compass,” Freedman interjected after Liebman claimed Corcoran was the number one brokerage in the city. “That’s what I call a wig snatch.”
But Liebman pushed back against Freedman’s crack with a dig of her own, arguing that the Corcoran brand was here to stay.
“Corcoran will never be Compass,” Liebman said. “You’re owned by Will Zeckendorf and Arthur Zeckendorf. Should I call you the Zeckendorfs? They don’t even give you their projects.”
Freedman then called on Liebman to join her in encouraging Compass CEO Robert Reffkin to abandon his fight to build an exclusive private listing network within the Compass ecosystem, which Freedman has long criticized as a move detrimental to both consumers and agents.
“We believe in marketing your properties to everybody,” Freedman said. She added that days on market was an important metric for home buyers, likening it to the number on the odometer of a car for sale. “You can’t lie about the miles.”
But Liebman rejected Freedman’s analogy, instead comparing the process of buying a home to shopping for luxury handbags.
“When you go into a car dealer and you find a car, you don’t get to say, ‘How long has it been on the lot?’” Liebman said. “When you go into Hermès to buy a bag, you don’t get to say, ‘How many do you have in the back?’”
Freedman urged Liebman and Compass leadership to encourage their agents to use the “Participants Only” feature on the residential listing service, which allows brokers to upload listings to the Real Estate Board of New York’s platform without having them syndicated to other portals, though Liebman said the feature isn’t widely used by brokers across firms, not just Compass.
Still, Freedman insisted that the industry is better off with agents sharing listings across brokerages and the metrics that come with them, instead of trying to “lie and trick” the market.
“Nobody’s trying to trick anyone,” Liebman objected. “I don’t know where this idea of trickery comes from. All we’re saying is, a seller has the right to choose.”
Liebman added that Corcoran has a long history of advocating for cobroking in the industry and vowed that she wouldn’t change her tune on that, even if other residential leaders — ahem, Reffkin — were ready to abandon the principle.
“No one’s telling me what to do,” Liebman said.
“And if they do, Pam, I’ve got a job for you,” Freedman replied.
“What makes everyone think I’m going anywhere?” Pam replied. “I’ve got the greatest job in the world.”
The duo lowered their weapons when asked about Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposed pied-à-terre tax on New York City homes valued at $5 million or more, a plan both Liebman and Freedman, along with others in the industry, fiercely oppose.
“This tax is a feel-good tax,” Freedman said, adding that she found Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s comments about the proposal and his nods to 220 Central Park South “deeply irresponsible and immature.”
Liebman added that fears over the tax were already driving down sales in the $20 million plus range, with buyers hesitating to pull the trigger in the current political climate.
“When you pass something like that, it’s only the first of many to come,” Liebman said about the proposed law. “None of this is solving what the greatest problem is, which is affordable housing.”
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