Peter Cummins didn’t notice any changes at @properties before he decided to jump to a new brand, but he also didn’t wait to find out.
After more than a decade with @properties, Cummins left in recent weeks to join Baird & Warner. And notably, the move came after Compass finished buying @properties in January.
“Unless Compass is building houses to sell, how do they expand the market and their profits?” Cummins asked. “There’s only one way: squeeze brokers or charge consumers more.”
Today, Compass is on the verge of another major acquisition, in this case of Anywhere Real Estate. And in the wake of that news, the industry is bracing to see what, if any, changes are on the way.
Turns out, @properties provides the closest comparable to examine.
Compass, Anywhere and @properties all declined to comment for this story.
But for his part, Cummins said that after the Compass deal, not much changed about life inside @properties — a potentially welcome observation for those at Anywhere brands who aren’t currently looking for change. Moreover, for consumers, shopping for houses directly on @properties website — or looking at the company’s listings on a portal — is essentially the same experience today that it was in January.
Still, with questions about change in the air, here are several areas in which the @properties deal might foreshadow the future for Compass and Anywhere.
Some transparency may go away
@properties was a private company when Compass announced in December it would purchase the competitor, so its performance was never part of the earnings cycle that gave insights into the company’s wellbeing every three months.
Still, metrics such as transactions, sales volume and agent counts were previously reported in ways that provided some public insight into the brand’s performance. The company was also listed within the Real Estate Almanac and other publicly accessible areas.
Those rankings showed that as of the time the deal closed, @properties was the No. 8 largest brokerage in the U.S.
After the sale closed, @properties was no longer listed as its own brand in the RealTrends Verified Brokerage Rankings. Instead, Compass is listed with an asterisk that notes its sales volume and sides include @properties’ 2024 performance.
Compass also didn’t make note of @properties’ performance when it unveiled its second quarter earnings report earlier this year.
Compass and Anywhere are listed as the list’s top two firms by sales volume, and Nos. 3 and 2 respectively for sides.
If the Compass and Anywhere report combined transaction information moving forward, the rankings would include Compass at just under $415 billion in sales volume for 2024 — nearly three times larger than its next closest competitor, eXp Realty.
Compass-style advocacy
Thad Wong | @properties Christie’s International Real Estate
While the @properties brand has remained distinct after it was acquired by Compass, the firms have advocated for similar positions that are at odds with many in the industry.
In early June, @properties co-founders Thad Wong and Mike Golden penned an opinion piece in the Chicago Tribune, rallying against a bill that Zillow was lobbying for at the Illinois Legislature.
The bill would have largely codified Zillow’s listing access standards, which require listings to be put on the MLS and on Zillow within one day of the listing being publicly marketed.
“Proponents of the bill argue it’s about transparency. But what’s not transparent is the driving force behind the bill: Zillow,” Wong and Golden wrote. “The $16 billion tech giant — worth more than the top 25 U.S. brokerage firms combined — is lobbying hard for this bill because, as it turns out, giving sellers and their agents options for how they bring a listing to market is a direct threat to Zillow’s bottom line.”
Perhaps as expected, the opinion piece put @properties in close alignment with Compass, which has sued Zillow over its listing access standards that ban listings that have been publicly marketed for more than a day before being put in the MLS and onto Zillow.
Cummins reiterated that he had seen no changes at @properties, specifically, and spoke highly of Wong and Golden.
Still, he returned to Compass’ push for a broad network of private listings as something he disagreed with.
“It has everything to do with me and nothing to do with @,” Cummins said.”It does with Compass to the extent that it’s a model that I don’t think is going to serve agents or consumers when listings start getting pigeon-holed into somebody’s closet and you’ve gotta slide a few dollars under the door to get access to.”
Office consolidation is possible
In September, Compass announced that it had sold its offices in North Shore Chicago to RE/MAX in the wake of the @properties acquisition. Significantly, @properties is based in Chicago and has long been a dominant player in the Windy City’s real estate market.
Ryan Schneider | Anywhere
Compass does not appear to have shuttered @properties offices, but it’s hard to imagine a merged Compass-Anywhere not looking for ways to increase efficiency on the ground.
For Anywhere’s part, the company owns Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate, Cartus, Century 21 Real Estate, Coldwell Banker, Corcoran Group, ERA Real Estate and Sotheby’s International Realty. Anywhere itself is headquartered in New Jersey, about 30 miles away from Compass’ main office in Manhattan.
Brand consolidation?
Regarding the Compass-Anywhere deal, the companies have minimized the likelihood of near-term disruption and spent the initial days after the announcement reassuring brokerage owners and franchisees that the various brands would remain distinct.
“[Brands] will remain fully independent and will retain its unique culture and brand positioning,” Anywhere said in a Sept. 26 letter to its team. “Compass and Anywhere have publicly committed to preserving our brand, as well as others under the Anywhere network.”
But Compass and Anywhere appeared to keep open the possibility of future changes after the deal closes, which is expected in the second half of next year.
“Until then Compass and Anywhere remain separate and independent, and its [sic] business as usual,” Anywhere wrote.
In the case of the earlier acquisition, Compass has indeed kept @properties as its own unique brand.
Still, there may be enough overlap among some of the Anywhere brands that consolidation could be inevitable. As one industry expert said he was watching what Compass might do with various Anywhere brands, particularly those that also compete in similar markets and within the luxury space.
“I can’t imagine they would change all those brands to Compass,” said Anthony Lamacchia, owner of Lamacchia Realty, which has been on its own expansion path in recent years. “If you think about it, CB’s been around [since 1906]. There’s a lot of power in that brand name. So they’re gonna keep that. I’m not convinced they’ll keep every brand.”
