Allie Beth Allman Deal Preserves Diversity of Dallas Luxury

Dallas’ reigning luxury brokerage is making a bid to preserve local control as Compass consolidates power throughout Texas.

Keith Conlon, the CEO of homegrown Dallas luxury brokerage Allie Beth Allman & Associates, recently acquired an ownership stake in the firm in an equity investment deal with its parent company, Eden Prairie, Minnesota-based HomeServices of America. The deal aims to keep the company’s center of authority local as Compass gathers more teams under its banner after its merger with Anywhere Real Estate was finalized earlier this month.

The deal also aims to preserve the variety of Dallas’ luxury market, as other Texas markets fuse under Compass and its affiliated companies.

Brands founded in Dallas dominate the market. It’s the only city of the state’s three top luxury markets in which the biggest sale of the year was represented by agents outside of Compass or the brands under its umbrella. Two Allie Beth Allman agents negotiated the sale of 6601 Hunters Glen Road in Dallas for $30.5 million, the state’s most expensive residential sale of 2025. Meanwhile, Compass had both sides of the sale for 2110 River Oaks Boulevard in Houston, asking $18.9 million, and Kuper Sotheby’s International Realty agent Bridget Ramey represented both parties in the sale of 13330 Shore Vista Drive in Austin.

It’s not just the biggest sale of the year. Of the top 10 deals in the Metroplex last year, a minority involved a Compass agent, and most involved an agent with one of several Dallas-based brands: Allie Beth Allman, Ebby Halliday Realtors, Dave Perry-Miller Real Estate or Synergy Real Estate. Alongside Allie Beth Allman, Ebby Halliday and Dave Perry-Miller, which are also owned by HomeServices of America, had agents on more than one deal. Dallas firms Brexen and Rogers Healy crop up more in lower-range listings.

That’s not the case in Austin or Houston.

Austin is as varied a market as Dallas, but not with locally-founded brands. Coldwell Banker, Engel & Volkers, Christie’s International and eXp Realty all landed on the Travis County leaderboard last year alongside Compass, Kuper Sotheby’s International Realty, and Moreland Properties, Compass’ most significant local competitor in the Austin market. Moreland is the only local brokerage with an agent on more than one of the top 10 deals.

“All of our key competitors are typically Compass, Sotheby’s, Christie’s. You know, these bigger brands that are all franchises and basically now all owned by Compass,” said Sarah Railey, president and broker of Moreland Properties.

Meanwhile, Compass rules Houston. Just one of the top 10 residential deals inked in Houston last year did not involve a Compass agent: the sale of a home at 3996 Inverness Drive, represented on both sides of the deal by Nancy Almodovar, founder of Nan & Co.

At the top echelon of Houston’s residential market, Nan & Co has no other consistent competition apart from Compass, Almodovar claimed.

“When we go pitch to a luxury listing, it’s typically just Compass and us,” Almodovar said.

Allie Beth Allman & Associates, Nan & Co and Moreland Properties all weathered a Compass recruitment blitz in 2018 and 2019 that significantly dented other groups.

Nan & Co lost no agents to Compass in 2018, but plenty of other brokerages did. Some “shut down,” according to Almodovar.

In Austin, Moreland Properties “chose not to entertain a meeting” with Compass about joining the company, Railey said.

“Compass would come in and buy companies, not necessarily shutter them,” Railey said.

Allie Beth Allman, which fields about 400 agents, reportedly lost 35 agents to Compass then, a third of what Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s lost.

“They did a great job of getting some of the top people in the city,” Conlon said.

He’s optimistic the equity investment deal will help preserve local control in the increasing homogeneous luxury brokerage world.

“The last thing I want to do is hamstring our organization because things aren’t going well in Northern California or New York, wherever it may be,” Conlon said.