Greg Hague, the 77-year-old founder of 72SOLD, has practiced law, built real estate businesses and spent decades refining seller-focused strategies around listing presentations, home showings and negotiation. Now, the newly named director of home sale strategy at Compass International Holdings is bringing that playbook into one of the residential real estate’s most closely watched modern companies.
Hague’s appointment adds another seller-choice advocate to Compass’ evolving post-Anywhere buildout — and puts him directly inside the debate over how homes should be marketed before they hit the MLS or major portals. And Hague does not sound like someone joining Compass to advise agents from the sidelines.
In an interview with Inman, Hague made clear the role is not just about scripts or listing presentations. Instead, it is part of a broader seller-choice philosophy closely aligned with Compass CEO Robert Reffkin’s push to challenge MLS rules, portal policies and the industry’s default assumptions about how homes should be marketed.
Hague rejected the idea that Compass’ Private Exclusives and broader three-phase marketing strategy hide homes from buyers, criticized Zillow’s lead-generation model and said lawmakers who have pushed for broader public marketing requirements have “got it wrong.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Inman: What made this role appealing to you right now?
Hague: For most of my professional career, I’ve been focused on seller representation. I grew up in this business. My dad sold real estate in Cincinnati, eventually built a seven-office firm, and every night growing up, Dad would talk real estate.
Over the years, I became intrigued with the question of what you can do — in the way you market a home, the way you show a home and the way you negotiate — to get sellers a better outcome.
I’m in my 70s. I’m up at 4:30 in the morning. I work 10, 12 hours a day. This isn’t a job. I don’t have a salary. Robert could fire me and I don’t lose income. I’m doing this because I believe so much in it.
How does your training fit with Compass’ three-phase marketing strategy?
Hague: Think of it not just as Compass. That’s really not a fair characterization. It’s CIH — it’s Compass, Coldwell Banker, Century 21 and the other brands in the CIH world.
My strategies complement the three-phase system. They don’t change it. What I’m going to make available at no cost to all 300,000 agents within the CIH world is absolutely free. It’s not mandatory. It’s simply for them to evaluate, because they are independent contractors.
I’m not their boss. They don’t have to do what I say. I wouldn’t want them to feel obligated. Who am I to tell one of those 300,000 agents what is best for any particular seller in any particular situation?
What are some examples of those strategies?
Hague: I don’t teach agents to characterize the price as the list price or the asking price. I teach them to re-characterize it as the starting price. Same price. But it’s just a better perception.
When you say asking price, that naturally conveys the impression that this is what we hope for, but don’t intend to get. When you say starting price, it conveys the perception that this is where offers begin. Does that mean every offer is going to be at that price or more? No. But it’s a better perception.
The 72SOLD system is also based on a 72-hour launch weekend: Saturday for showings, Sunday for negotiation and Monday for offer presentation to the seller. That is when the seller intends to sell, but is not obligated to sell.
Critics of private listings say they reduce transparency and keep homes away from buyers. What’s your response?
Hague: It is a myth. It is absolutely misleading.
When we market a home, whether it’s off-MLS or on, we are marketing aggressively. Agents in my training are not hiding it. They are aggressively marketing it to every buyer they can possibly reach, through social media, through outreach, through every listing agent who has a similar property.
Every buyer agent is welcome to show it, sell it and earn a commission based on whatever is negotiated. So there’s nothing private about it.
Robert and I have talked about this, and he agrees that the term “Private Exclusive” probably doesn’t fairly characterize what that is.
How does that work in practice before a home goes on the MLS?
Hague: If I list your home, I start marketing it aggressively off MLS. Why? Because let’s see what kind of activity we can get.
Say you live in Chicago. I can get it in front of every Chicago agent. I don’t need the MLS to do that. I can blast it out through an e-flyer system to thousands of Chicago-area agents. And if it says, “brand new, off MLS, not yet online,” as a buyer agent, you’re going to say, “Oh wow, nobody knows about this.” You’re going to call your buyer immediately.
I would put it to every agent in the market. Why only CIH? But I do it in a way where it’s not tracking days on market.
And I set up what I call a launch weekend. Buyer agents reach out: Can I see the home? And I say to you, honestly, the sellers have busy lives and they asked me to set up showings this Saturday from two to four. I could give you a 3:15.
Every single time, you as a buyer agent are going to say, “I don’t want to wait until Saturday. Can I get in earlier?” And that’s where it gets interesting. I say, “Tell me about your buyer.” You describe them. I say, “Would you like me to call the sellers and see if they’d consider letting you in early?”
I call, the sellers say yes, and all of a sudden this isn’t just a normal showing. You know you’re seeing it before the public launch. It feels special.
You’ve said days on market can be “acid to the price” of a home. What do you mean?
Hague: I put your home in the MLS, three to four weeks go by. A buyer is going to see it, and they’re not going to pay you as much as an early buyer. Later buyers rarely pay the same because they feel like previous buyers have been rejecting it for weeks.
That negative perception of time on market — it is acid to the price of your home. It’s why Robert and I believe so much in marketing freedom.
Why would you publish a home online right away? It starts tracking days on market. It creates records of price adjustments. You haven’t tested the price. You haven’t created urgency. You haven’t given yourself a chance to build the perception that buyers are heading off a lot of other buyers.
Why do you see major portals as part of the downside of MLS-first marketing?
Hague: Zillow is a website that uses listings to attract buyers that it sells to agents who pay for leads. Everybody knows that.
The “contact agent” button on Zillow does not connect with the listing agent. It connects with an agent who pays a referral fee, and that agent typically knows no more about the home than the buyer does from seeing the photos.
There is a place in the world for the MLS. I’m not against the MLS. Zillow has its business model. I don’t like it, but I get how they monetize.
But this idea that you should start marketing a home by getting it in the MLS and on Zillow within 24 hours? Are you kidding me? You haven’t tested the price. You’re immediately tracking days on market. You haven’t created any urgency. You haven’t given yourself a chance to build the perception that buyers feel like they’re getting ahead of other buyers.
Several states, including Washington and Wisconsin, have pushed legislation around public marketing requirements. Do you think those lawmakers got it wrong?
Hague: They’re dead wrong.
Those laws are based on the theory that you should get homes out and publicly market them and not hide them. But take Compass, for example. Those listings in phase one, where they’re not yet in the MLS — nobody is hiding them. Those agents are not in any way prohibited from marketing them in every single form.
Every single buyer in America can go to the Compass website and see every single one of their Phase One listings right now.
They just don’t want to accumulate visible days on market, records of price adjustments and have guides next to them saying some buyer should offer less. You would not want that on your home unless you had to.
Zillow, NAR, the MLSs — these are not regulatory bodies. These are private institutions. The regulatory body for real estate agents is the state licensing division, and its job is to protect the public.
How does your training address commissions? Are you advising agents on what to charge?
Hague: I’m not going to tell agents what to charge.
There’s a whole debate about whether percentage commissions are the best way for this industry to charge, as opposed to an hourly rate or other things. But since percentage commission is the accepted way, let’s just deal with that.
Most agents have been in the business for some period of time and have developed a track record of charging a certain amount for their services. What I want to teach them is ways they can better justify whatever they’re charging.
They can go to a seller and say, “Look at the things I do compared to my competitors.” If the seller can see how those things increase the probability — there are no guarantees — that buyers will make higher-price offers, then the seller sees the value.
Does your role tie into Compass’ broader growth strategy or its 30/30 Vision?
Hague: That’s not what I’ve talked to Robert about at length.
If Compass grows to have a huge market share in big markets, then that’s great. But I’m not there to recruit agents. I’m not there to take market share. I’m there to voluntarily make the strategies that I know work available to agents, to help them do more business because they do business better.
I can’t change the tire on a car. There are so many things I’m not good at. But I believe I know how to teach agents to go to another level in the way they represent sellers. That’s my passion. I want agents to be the Uber in a world of taxis. I don’t want people to see them as a better taxi. I want sellers to say, “I’ve never had an agent take me through all the things you do.” That’s what I’m there to teach.
You’ve been very open about your admiration for Reffkin. What shaped that?
Hague: He had a company worth billions of dollars, publicly traded, and then he gets up and picks a fight with Zillow and the MLSs and says, “This is wrong.” Who does that?
I like to think of myself as a courageous person, and I honestly don’t know that I could have done that with a company I had built and put its future at risk.
I think he’s a hero. I don’t think I’ve ever said that about anybody in this industry.
