In 2021, Neda Navab said her role at Compass is all about the “long game.”
At the time, Mr. Navab was the eastern region president of a securities firm, riding high after a successful initial public offering. This has given Compass the momentum and funding to further enrich its end-to-end platform and expand into new geographies.
“It all comes back to our strategy of making buying and selling a home as simple and comfortable an experience as possible for both the agent and the buyers and sellers on the other side of the transaction,” she told Inman in December of that year. “We remain focused on [goal] No matter what 2022 brings us. ”
Neda Navab | Compass
Fast forward to today, Navab is currently settling into his new role as president of Compass. At the top of her list is hosting 100 agent events in the first 100 days, all with the aim of harnessing the heartbeat of agents, the brokerage’s mission.
“I was in Greenwich yesterday morning, I was in Westport yesterday evening, and I’m going to Pennsylvania next week. You know, I’m just going across the country,” she said. “As the compass grew and Robert grew, [Reffkin] step into a leading role [parent company] Dear Compass International Holdings, Leaders like me need to be closer to the field, closer to the field, closer to the agents…This is a time of great change for the industry, and it remains a tough market in which to practice real estate. Our real estate professionals need our support. ”
The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Inman: It’s been four years since our last conversation, and a lot has changed since then. You started as Robert’s chief of staff in 2018, and the last time we spoke, you were regional president. What do you think about the journey that got you to where you are now?
Navab: I’ll tell you something very interesting. My journey to Compass began decades ago for two reasons.
Well, this week is actually quite moving. My parents were born and raised in Iran. Then in 1979, my mother had to flee Iran due to the Islamic Revolution. She arrived in Boston without a dollar and worked behind the counter at Dunkin Donuts, but one job opportunity after another led her to a career in real estate when I was young.
Therefore, I had the opportunity to work as a real estate professional at a young age. It gave me a deep respect for the profession and the opportunities it brings to families and communities.
And the funny thing is, Robert and I have known each other for over 20 years. We met as students at Columbia University. As you can imagine, once you meet Robert, you’ll never forget him. He’s very good at keeping in touch with people and we stayed in touch over the years. Then in 2018, he contacted me about the opportunity to join Compass. It really was a full-circle moment. I have to be honest. I wasn’t looking for a chief of staff opportunity, but I had known him for a while and knew how difficult it is to be a real estate professional, so when I spoke to him I was struck by how agent-focused he was. So I took a leap of faith.
How has that experience influenced your current activities?
Let me tell you, this is the most fun and difficult role on Compass. There are a number of leaders around the company today who either started out as Robert’s chief of staff or were Robert’s chief of staff at some point. Your only focus is to make Compass a success. Develop a deep understanding of the core of the company, which is the real estate profession, rather than thinking about things from the perspective of other specific departments.
This is behind the promise I made on my first day in this role: to attend and host 100 agent events in my first 100 days. I’ve spent a lot of time talking to them about my mission to make sure Compass is the best brokerage firm that delivers on the promise of a big company, but with a boutique feel.
Big is what drives us, but boutique is our strength.
The power of the platform we have built for them is huge. What’s great is the great referral network they have. A big one is the fact that we have the opportunity to partner with Redfin.com, the top 3 search portal in the US, increasing visibility of soon-to-be-published properties and providing more options for sellers and their real estate professionals.
But boutiques are our strength. That’s the feeling our real estate professionals feel when they walk into a local office, and the person at the front desk knows they’ll ask things like how grandpa is, how was closing on Sunday, and were the inspections completed as hoped? And we believe that our real estate professionals offer our clients the power of big and boutique.
Let’s focus on the Redfin partnership. Are you looking at the next few months as a testing ground for your partnership? Perhaps a litmus test for how it will evolve over the next few years?
So far, what excites agents most about the Redfin partnership is the opportunity to attract 60 million eyeballs each month to their upcoming listings without any digital baggage. Digital baggage includes days on market, public price declines, and status changes. This eliminates the risk of testing the market by launching a listing during the Coming Soon stage. From a homeowner’s perspective, that’s great.
You can start your list. It can be displayed on the top portal. Get feedback. You can adjust it. And if I choose to make the list more public, the benefit is that I can soon go through that period without any digital baggage.
By the way, during this upcoming period, listing agents are listed on Redfin, so the agents who know the home best can talk to buyers and answer any questions they may have about the home. I think there is a lot of excitement among sellers and our listing agents about this opportunity opening up. Expect to bring more inventory online ahead of the spring market.
As time is running out, let’s end today’s conversation by talking about broader industry trends. At last month’s ICNY, artificial intelligence and integration were at the top of the list, and Compass’ acquisition of Anywhere certainly drove much of the talk about the latter. How do these trends apply to your decision-making?
For us, all roads lead to real estate professionals, right? Let’s take AI as an example. We’ve focused on building training to help agents leverage the tools available to them to hone their skills and better serve their customers.
There is an example that I shared today. That’s Susan Vanek, one of our agents in Westport, CT. I was on Instagram the other day and she posted this amazing video, and I couldn’t help but be drawn in, so I sent her a message and said, “Great video.” She replied: “I used AI to script everything I said, not just the words I said. And I literally had the AI tell me how to walk, what to do with my hands, which part of the house I should be in.” And the quality was a 10 out of 10, so it really shows.
So our focus is just making sure we leverage all the best practices that great agents across the country have and sharing that across the board. As I mentioned earlier, the best ideas come from agents, so patterning how agents use these apps is a key starting point for us.
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