In many markets across the country, Compass’s acquisition of Anywhere Real Estate has resulted in a mega-brokerage firm with over 50% market share. As agents and brokers in some of these markets come to terms with their new massive competitor, many are thinking about how the merger may change the agent recruitment game in their market.
In the Greater Boston area, Chip Stella, one of the broker-owners of Wellesley, Mass.-based Rutledge Properties, noted that historically Compass had used high splits and sign-on bonuses to boost agent count, inspiring other firms to offer similar incentives. But after the merger, he is wondering what may happen to practices like this and innovation in general now that so many agents are all part of one overarching firm.
“Previously all of these brands and companies were pushing each other to offer more and better services to agents and brokers to try and recruit from one another. I wonder what is going to happen with that. From a technology standpoint, the Anywhere brands were behind Compass when it came to their tech stack, but now those Anywhere agents have access to Compass’s technology,” Stella says. “Part of Compass’s push to improve technology was to drive agent recruitment, but does that now change because the recruitment pool is smaller?”
Three ways to compete
When it comes to recruiting agents, many in the industry feel that there are three primary ways brokerages can compete with one another for agents: splits, resources including technology, support and legal resources and culture. With Compass’s vocal support of its private listing network and advertising of its exclusive inventory, many in the industry believe that the firm will use its private listing network as an additional resource to potentially entice agents to the brokerage.
“The Compass managing broker can now call the No. 1 agent for the local [Keller Williams] office who never would have considered Compass at all, and pitch them with the size of their [private listing network],” Rob Hahn, an attorney and industry analyst wrote in a post on his Notorious ROB substack. “Caps and low commissions are awesome, but not if you’re losing deals to Compass agents with their additional things for buyers and sellers.”
For smaller firm or boutique brokerages, Hahn acknowledged that it would be challenging to create an effective internal private listing network, so he believes an effective strategy to compete with Compass in this space would be leveraging a third-party private listing network like Top Agent Network (TAN). This is exactly what Shalini Sadda, a broker associate at the Side-brokered City Real Estate, has in mind.
“Private, exclusive inventory is just one piece of why agents choose to join a brokerage,” Sadda says. “They’re ultimately looking for well-rounded support that helps them grow and succeed.”
She adds that if an agent has concerns about private listing networks, she is a member of TAN and agents could use that network if desired.
It’s all about culture
As Sadda and her team look to recruit and retain agents in the San Francisco metropolitan area, one of the markets a combined Compass-Anywhere has a large market share, she said they are really focusing and relying on the culture they’ve cultivated at City Real Estate.
“We focus on attracting high-quality agents because fostering a culture of learning and growth is incredibly important to us. While we are all strong at what we do, many of us serve different markets or bring specialized expertise, which creates valuable opportunities to learn from one another. Agents join our team not only because of our success, but also because of our strong reputation for professionalism and work ethic — which is essential in a relationship-driven, sales-focused business,” Sadda says.
She adds that being a boutique firm also enables her to offer agents an added layer of support they may not have access to at a larger company. City Real Estate is ranking No. 1 in San Francisco in the 2025 RealTrends Verified City Rankings.
“It’s also incredibly rewarding to be part of a company that is thoughtfully sized — not too large and not too small,” she said. “Agents don’t get lost in the shuffle. For example, City Real Estate offers a dedicated in-house marketing team and support staff, and because we aren’t a massive corporation with thousands of agents, these resources remain highly accessible and personalized.”
While certainly larger than Sadda’s team, at Douglas Elliman CEO Michael Liebowitz says he and his team are also focusing on the company’s boutique culture. Douglas Elliman is ranked No. 6 by sales volume in the 2025 RealTrends Verified Brokerage rankings.
“If you take Compass and Anywhere, through the merger they are now over 300,000 agents with all the different brands and franchises. For the smaller brokers, we are really the alternative to this, because do you really want to be in the middle of a mall or a big box store, especially if you are a luxury broker or agent?,” Liebowitz says. “And we are still a large publicly traded company with an international presence. But we are one brand, so you won’t be losing culture with all those different brands, and that makes us an alternative if you don’t want to be in the mall or the large supermarket.”
Looking beyond the Compass-Anywhere merger, Liebowitz said Douglas Elliman is also a great place for smaller brokers looking to step up their business as his firm can provide them with the same boutique feel, but with more resources and a much larger referral network.
Finances make the difference
Although Hahn acknowledges that culture and relationships are an integral part of the real estate industry, he believes for many agents and brokers it is the finances that make the difference. But this certainly poses challenges as for many brokerages as margins are already pretty tight.
Steve Murray, the co-founder of RTC Consulting, agrees that commission splits are one way companies could try to entice agents, but he is well aware of potential challenges going this route.
“You have brokerages like Douglas Elliman who are trying to improve their balance sheet so bigger splits would be difficult and then you have other firms that may not be in a position to do that as they try to recover from this slower housing market we’ve experienced,” Murray said.
Despite Compass’s confidence that it will successfully integrate all six Anywhere brands, as well as its owned brokerage operations into one firm, Murray remains a bit skeptical, advising brokerages looking for recruiting opportunities to watch for any potential agent or team breakage as the integration gets underway.
“I think the biggest challenge is going to be with their existing Compass agents because for a number of years they felt special because they had access to this platform and technology that their competitors didn’t. Now their competitors do have access, and they are all expected to be one big happy family,” Murray says.
It is this opportunity that Liebowitz says he and his firm are watching closely, as it would present a wonderful opportunity for his firm to grow via agent and team breakage. But Liebowitz says that his recruiting team is not focused on agents impacted by the merger.
“In situations like this, no one leaves because they are happy where they are. People keep saying that you need to go after those agents, but I say wait and see where the cuts happen and where those agents organically go,” he says. “I’m not going to go after agents who are happy with the situation. They aren’t interested in moving. When they are unhappy, though, then they’ll be calling us.”
As the pool of agents in many of these markets shrinks due to the merged company’s large market share, Murray said he expects to see recruitment efforts potentially intensify as Compass looks for an even greater market share, warning independent brokers to examine their own recruitment and retention strategies.
“In a market like New York City, where Compass now owns Coldwell Banker, Corcoran and Sotheby’s — a large share of the top-10 firms — they can no longer really compete with each other for agents because they would just be cannibalizing each other. If I’m Douglas Elliman or Brown Harris Stevens, I’d be concerned that they may intensify their effort to recruit from me,” Murray says.
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