Compass’ CEO continued to focus on NAR, MLS, and Zillow, which he says are too restrictive, as he calls for widespread reform of the existing status quo in the real estate industry.
Compass is at war with what it calls “organized real estate,” and CEO Robert Refkin laid out his battle plan at an Inman event in New York City on Tuesday.
In his first public comments since Compass completed its acquisition of Anywhere Real Estate, Mr. Levkin took aim squarely at the National Association of Realtors, Zillow and the multiple listing service, which he believes are unfair to real estate agents.
“I don’t think we should have 518 people in MLS,” he said. “I believe that brokerages should come together and create a common MLS that is owned by brokers and agents and that treats everyone fairly and equally, without fines or bans.”
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He likened the concept to the banks working together to restructure Visa and take it public around 2008.
“If all the brokerage firms worked together to create one national MLS owned by the brokerage firms – ”
“By the way, I’d be happy if Brian Donnellan from BrightMLS was the CEO,” he said. “Great. Let’s do this. Let’s create one national MLS that works for the entire country. Then a new super site will be created. That’s what should happen.”
Refkin made the comments during an onstage interview with Brad Inman on the opening morning of Inman Connect New York on Tuesday.
The comments pulled back the curtain on the direction Refkin and his superbrokers are taking to change the status quo of how U.S. real estate is listed and sold.
Mr. Refkin ignored Mr. Inman’s joke that Compass could acquire Homes.com from Coster to compete directly with Zillow and the top three real estate search portals.
Instead, his request was for a neutral property database with rules he proposed that would allow real estate agents to sell properties as they wished.
“The way it works is exactly the same as a visa,” he says. “Compass will have no voting rights. Compass will have no unfavorable ownership interest in any state holdings and will have an independent board of directors that will function independently in all respects.”
Decline contract with Zillow
Levkin also shared insight into the deal Zillow allegedly offered Compass last year.
Mr. Levkin said Zillow would offer up to $1.6 billion to Compass “if it prevents our agents from selling Zillow.”
Errol Samuelson of Zillow at Inman Connect New York.
Zillow has enacted a policy aimed at preventing large brokerages from creating or MLSs allowing private listing networks if the listed products are not sold on Zillow.
This policy was taken to ensure that consumers could view the widest possible source of active real estate listing information on Zillow’s platform, which the company believed would allow it to sell more products to real estate agents.
Levkin puts it differently.
“They’re trying to penalize brokerage agents and force people to list everything on Zillow,” Levkin said. “So they offered $1.3 billion, $1.6 billion, and I said no.”
“My wife said, ‘Don’t sell your agent,'” he said.
Compass, meanwhile, sued Zillow to prevent enforcement of the policy. This case has not yet been resolved.
The alleged allegations were mentioned in Compass’ findings of fact and conclusions of law filed in mid-December.
In its filing, the allegations were referred to as a “potential partnership” between Compass and Zillow that included “various product offerings and benefits that Zillow projected would generate additional revenue for Compass of $1.3 billion to $1.6 billion annually and double Compass’ market share.”
Read: ZILLOW’s Samuelson fights back
Mr. Refkin specifically cited an affidavit by Zillow CFO Jeremy Hoffman as a source of information on the proposed transaction.
Mr. Hoffman acknowledged that if Compass and Zillow reach an agreement, they could see “revenue increases” of between $1.3 billion and $1.6 billion, according to portions of a deposition obtained by Mr. Inman on Tuesday.
“We had one meeting about this, and they weren’t really interested, and we weren’t going to get too hung up on what the numbers were,” Hoffman said.
The comments are consistent with internal Zillow documents included in the filing and exclusively reported by Inman.
According to Zillow documents, the company had set up a meeting early last year with representatives of the nation’s largest real estate brokerages and franchises to secure more partnerships, including securing a direct listing feed between brokerages and the portal.
Some of the documents suggested Zillow offered to send buyers directly to listing brokers as part of the partnership.
Documents show that eXp and NextHome have reached an agreement with Zillow. It’s unclear what services and benefits the partnership included or what agreements the other companies have reached.
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