Does The Compass-rocket Alliance Aim To Undermine Nar Clear Cooperation Enforcement?

When it comes to the National Association of Realtors (NAR) Clear Cooperation Policy (CCP), it is hard to find a more vocal critic of the policy than Compass International Holdings (CIH) CEO Robert Reffkin. However, according to Reffkin, his war against CCP and the MLSs that still enforce the policy may soon be over.

Reffkin’s confidence in this stems from the “historical alliance” he announced between Compass and Rocket Companies Thursday afternoon. As part of the partnership, Compass’s Coming Soon Listings, and eventually its Private Exclusive inventory, will appear on Redfin starting March 16. The listings will not show days on market or pricing history and agents will have to obtain written permission from their sellers for the listings to be syndicated to Redfin. The program is currently only available to Compass agents, but the company said it will be available to agents at any CIH brand later this year. Reffkin also noted that this three-year partnership is exclusive, meaning that no other brokerage wishing to more broadly market their coming soon or exclusive listings can strike a similar deal with Rocket. 

“I think this alliance marks the end of the restrictions that MLSs have had on agents and sellers on how they market homes,” Reffkin said during his firm’s Q4 2025 earnings call with investors and analysts Thursday evening. “Because when they’re restricting the agent and home seller, they’re going to be restricting Rocket. I don’t see a scenario where the MLSs will continue to enforce these restrictive rules with Rocket and Redfin on our side because we now have more resources.” 

The agreement will expose NAR, says Reffkin

Reffkin also argued that the alliance degrades the “moral narrative” that Compass is hiding listings via its three-phased marketing strategy, which includes Compass Coming Soon Listings.

“We’re going to give our public listings to Rocket-Redfin, publicly searchable [by] 60 million people,” he said. “In each of those markets, what’s going to happen is that [the] MLS is going to send our agents a fine for up to $5,000. The agent is going to ask if we can help them, and we will, but what is the MLS going to tell the public? Are you telling me that you’re fining the agent $5,000 for marketing the listing publicly on a site searchable by 60 million people? That you’re doing that to protect fair housing? Are you doing that to protect transparency? Are you doing that to ensure that we’re not double ending deals? Or are you doing this not to protect your transparency but [to] protect your own business model? It is going to expose that.” 

Due to this, he views the partnership as a win for “seller choice”  as it “provides homeowners the flexibility for how they introduce their homes to the market and does not subject homeowners to any negative insights for listings.”  

A win for consumers

According to Reffkin, in a year, CIH should have over 200,000 private exclusive listings on its sites that are not available on other sites. Reffkin noted that Compass’s Private Exclusive listing platform will be available for use by agents joining CIH via the Anywhere Real Estate acquisition in July of this year. Prior to CCP going into effect, in 2018, Reffkin said 90% of Compass listings began as publicly searchable coming soon listings on the brokerage’s website. 

According to Reffkin, this brought “the consumer to [the firm’s] site to search as any normal company would if they weren’t being restricted by non-governmental entities like NAR.” However, if CCP enforcement becomes a thing of the past, as Reffkin is betting, his firm will obtain more private exclusive listings driving more prospective buyers to the website. 

Leads from Rocket and Redfin

The potential for more buyer leads coming through Compass.com, as well as the partnership with Rocket, is leading more agents to join Compass and other CIH brands, according to Reffkin. During Thursday’s call he said five agents had already reached out inquiring about joining Compass due to the leads. 

“We have 1.2 million Rocket Mortgage and Redfin leads that will come to our agents as part of this,” Reffkin said. 

At the end of 2025, Compass had 21,190 principal agents, up 19.4%. As of Q1 2026, due to the close of the Anywhere acquisition, CIH boasts 340,000 agents and over 700,000 listings across all nine brands under the CIH umbrella. 

Integration with Anywhere going well

During Thursday’s call Reffkin also discussed how integration efforts related to the Anywhere merger were going. 

“I want to start by saying how pleased I am by how well both our management teams are working together,” Reffkin said. “Since close, we’ve made great progress by deploying best practices and integration, including establishing a transformation office that will be a single control tower to ensure we are achieving our targets, setting a clear road map to create a more efficient organization across each of our business units and quickly creating clarity around the organization’s spans and layers.”

In Q4 2025, Compass incurred $10.6 million in Anywhere merger- and integration-related expenses. But while the merger is costing the company, Reffkin also discussed the “cost synergies” he and his team are exploring. According to Reffkin, the CIH team has “moved aggressively on synergies.” 

“In just seven weeks, we have already actioned $175 million of our cost synergy target- the heavy lifting of headcount and vendor consolidation is already underway,” Reffkin said. 

According to Reffkin these actions were taken “at various points throughout the first quarter,” and he warned investors and analysts that “there will only be a modest benefit to Q1.” 

While Reffkin did not discuss any specific information related to “headcount consolidation” efforts, he did mention Anywhere’s technology team as an area CIH was examining to deliver some potential cost savings.

“Historically, Anywhere has capitalized a large amount of technology labor to its balance sheet, approximately $80 million in 2025, and as part of our cost synergy work, a significant portion of the projects that have been subject to capitalization in the past will be cut as we shift the technology focus to the Compass platform,” Reffkin said. “Therefore, of the roughly $100 million in synergies to be realized in 2026, I’d assume slightly more than half will be reflected as reduced [capital expenditures] in 2026 and remaining will be reflected as reduced [operating expenses] in 2026.”

In an emailed statement regarding the reports of layoffs at CIH, a CIH spokesperson wrote that the company “continuously assesses” its business needs “to align resources effectively and focus on the areas that will create the most value” for the firm’s agents. 

“Post-merger, adjustments are being made to strengthen our operations and focus on our strategic priorities,” the spokesperson added.

As CIH looks ahead, it will certainly hope to find more ways to cut expenses as Compass the brokerage lost $42.5 million in Q4 2025, up from a net loss of $40.4 million a year ago. This increase came despite a 23.1% annual increase in revenue to $1.7 billion, a 19.7% yearly increase in transactions to 60,328 transactions and a 21.6% year-over-year jump in gross transaction value to $65.6 billion.

For the full year, Compass generated $6.962 billion in revenue, up from $5.629 billion a year ago and it recorded a net loss of $58.7 million down from a $154.5 million net loss in 2024.