Compass, the New York-based real estate technology and brokerage company that’s seen a string of success lately, announced on Monday the launch of its first office in Dallas.
This marks Compass’s second major expansion in the last three months, and helps put the company further along in its ambitious bid to gain 20 percent marketshare in the top 20 metropolitan markets by 2020, company executives told Inman News.
Following on the heels of an outpost that Compass opened in Chicago last November, the new brick-and-mortar location at 4012 Oak Lawn Avenue in Dallas’s Uptown neighborhood will be anchored by a team of 13 agents from The Collective, a year-old brokerage founded by Christy Berry and Jonathan Rosen, both of whom are also coming over.
Four additional employees will staff the office, and former Briggs Freeman agent Bryan Pacholski will head up agent development in Dallas, as the new team ramps up operations over the next month.
“In terms of Dallas, it’s the sixth largest residential market in the country so we knew we wanted to launch it in 2018,” Rob Lehman, chief revenue officer at Compass, told Inman on Monday. “The question was always going to be what the right timing for it was, and who the right partners were going to be. And it was serendipitous how things came together with The Collective, who we just think is an absolutely impeccable cultural fit for Compass.”
Launched in February 2017, The Collective tallied 135 transactions for a total $134,825,057 in sales in 2017, according to data provided by Compass. Berry and Rosen, formerly agents with Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s International, inked an agreement with Compass last month, after being sold on the company’s client-driven, technology-forward real estate strategy, Berry said.
Agents with The Collective will join Compass as independent contractors and transition all existing business to Compass over the next two months, company executives said.
“Our brands align so well,” said Berry, who has traditionally focused on high-end residential properties in Dallas typically valued in excess of $1 million. “For us, it’s such a positive move because of our focus on what our agents are doing, and now we can elevate everybody along with us, especially our clients. And being the first Compass office here, it’s so exciting.”
The Dallas outpost comes just over a month after Compass announced the first of what is to be three brick-and-mortar locations in Chicago, at 3033 North Clark Street. Anchored by The Lowe Group and Principal Jeff Lowe, formerly of Berkshire Hathaway HomeService, the Lincoln Park branch was expected to be followed soon with openings in River North and Bucktown, Lehman said.
Compass’s 2020 vision plan, known internally as “2020 by 2020,” also calls for expansion into Seattle, San Diego, Phoenix, Austin, Houston, Atlanta, Charlotte and Philadelphia by later this year. The company currently boasts locations in New York City, The Hamptons, Boston, Miami and Ft. Lauderdale, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles and Orange County, Santa Barbara and Montecito, Aspen, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area.
Compass’s expansion, ushered along with a record-setting $450 million investment at the end of last year through the Softbank Vision Fund, will run in tandem with plans to create a custom Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform for the company’s 2,000 agents, a targeted digital marketing tool and new solar-powered sales signage.
Those technological innovations, in addition to a new training program, are all slated for 2018. All of which raises the recurring question: why does Compass keep winning?
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