The deal involves two of the nation’s top-four brokerages by sales volume in 2024, according to data from RealTrends Verified. Compass ranked No. 1 last year with $184.5 billion across more than 177,000 home sales. HomeServices was No. 4 with $133.8 billion across nearly 236,000 sales.
The report comes just days after Rocket Companies announced an agreement to purchase Redfin in an all-stock transaction worth $1.75 billion in equity. That deal is expected to close in the second or third quarter of 2025.
Compass has been active participant in the M&A world. In December, it announced the purchase of Christie’s International Real Estate and @properties. That deal is expected to close in 2025, with Compass paying $444 million, including $150 million in cash and 44 million shares of its Class A common stock.
Compass CEO Robert Reffkin has aggressive growth plans for the brokerage. He has previously stated that the firm wants to establish a 30% market share in 30 top markets across the country.
Reffkin has also been a vocal critic of one of the real estate industry’s most controversial rules, the Clear Cooperation Policy (CCP) established years ago by the National Association of Realtors (NAR). Compass has been seeking to end the rule so that it can establish a larger inventory of exclusive listings that don’t have to be publicly marketed.
As of mid-February, 31% of all Compass listings were marketed as private exclusives, according to data compiled by industry consultant Mike DelPrete. That represents 150% growth since July 2024.
Reffkin has also said that CCP infringes upon a seller’s right to list their home as they choice.
“We don’t think this is right. Homeowners should not be forced to do anything they don’t want to do,” Reffkin said during Compass’s third-quarter 2024 earnings call.
“The future we are creating is one where buyers will know to search Compass.com, as we become known as the place homeowners list their homes early, through Compass Private Exclusives and Compass Coming Soon, which will protect them from the risk of MLS exposure.”
NAR leadership is reportedly set to make a decision on the future of CCP by the end of March.
Buffett is the fifth-wealthiest American with a net worth of $150 billion, according to 2024 rankings from Forbes. But HomeServices lost $107 million last year, according to Berkshire Hathaway’s earnings report.
In December, HomeServices executive vice president Chris Kelly told HousingWire that he felt the company was ready to move past the industry turbulence of recent years and return to its “original DNA.”
“We are not going not going to head into 2025 in a full market recovery,” Kelly said. “There are still those cyclical market challenges ahead of us. Whether it be rates, inventory, those challenges are going to persist.
“But whether it is the market, regulatory challenges, legal challenges, whatever it is, there is not too much more you can throw at us that we don’t feel confident in addressing and working our way through.”
Compass, meanwhile, posted a net loss of $40.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2024, although that was about half of what it lost in Q4 2023. Its national market share grew to 5.06% of all home sales from October through December, up 65 basis points year over year. And it continues to attract agents in droves, adding roughly 3,000 over the course of last year to finish at more than 17,700.
