How Compass Used Technology To Chart Its Course To The Top

In 2017, Kyle Talbott and his wife Karen Talbott, who make up the Corcoran-brokered Talbott Team, were considering a move to Compass, after talk about the then 5-year-old brokerage’s technology had caught their attention.

“We had a preview of the system that Compass started putting together back then, and we were both really impressed,” Kyle Talbott said.

Fast forward nearly a decade later, and while the Talbotts ultimately chose to stay with Corcoran back in 2017, they now have access to Compass’s technology, known as the Home Platform, thanks to the Robert Reffkin-helmed firm’s $1.6 billion acquisition of Corcoran’s parent company Anywhere Real Estate earlier this year. 

“At Corcoran, we now [can] access to this system that I know has gone through multiple iterations and had the kinks worked out,” Kyle Talbott said. “Using it, it just feels right — like when you get to sit in a luxury vehicle with nice leather seats and everything is ergonomically correct and it does all the things you were hoping for and then some others that are an added bonus.” 

The Talbotts’ experience reflects a much larger shift taking place inside Compass. After spending more than a decade and billions of dollars building its proprietary technology platform — a strategy that drew plenty of skepticism along the way — the brokerage is now putting that investment in the hands of a much larger audience following its acquisition of Anywhere Real Estate.

As artificial intelligence reshapes how agents work, Compass executives, industry analysts and agents themselves say the Home Platform has evolved from a recruiting tool into a potential competitive advantage that could influence productivity, recruiting and the next phase of the brokerage technology race.

Welcome to the Home Platform

Agents like Kyle Talbott gained access to Compass’s Home Platform earlier this month when the holding company for Compass and Corcoran, Compass International Holdings, began rolling out the Home Platform to its company-owned brokerage brands. The firm has said it plans to extend access to its franchise network in 2027.

While he is still in the early stages of exploring the platform, Kyle Talbott said what he is most impressed with is the simplicity and efficiency of the platform. Gaining access to the platform when he did, Kyle Talbott said he has gotten a lot of use out of the system’s reverse prospecting function. 

“As you head into summer, you’re always hoping that, by the end of the season, you’ve cleared all of your listings.” he said. “To be able to use reverse prospecting to see the search parameters of other agent’s buyer clients, I am able to pinpoint my efforts when I pick up the phone or send an email. When I reach out I know that I am actually sending the listing to someone who is actively trying to help someone find a home.” 

For Arthur Goodrich, who leads the Sotheby’s International Realty-brokered Goodrich Group, one of the tools he has been most excited about is the customer dashboard. 

“To be able to provide the client with an easy to navigate platform to look at homes and see what’s happening in their transaction is great,” Goodrich said. “Before my clients were looking all over the place to find things, and I had to create spreadsheets to track transactions. The platform addresses all of that in one place.”

Trading in the ‘jalopy’

Both Goodrich and Kyle Talbott say Compass’s Home Platform is a big step up from the technology they had previously been using.

At Corcoran, Kyle Talbott said he was using a Frankenstein-like tech stack that he had cobbled together from a variety of sources. 

“It [Home Platform] cuts through a lot of the concerns I had,” he said. “I’m able to have a tighter grasp on the pulse of what is happening as opposed to wondering if this jalopy I’ve created is going to get me to the end of the block or not.”  

The road less traveled

Getting here has not been easy. Over the years, Compass has invested billions of dollars to create the tech stack it now offers its agents and brokers. This high level of financial investment was a large source of the criticism lobbied at the company, especially as it struggled to generate positive free cash flow and navigate the rising interest rate environment after the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“I think those criticisms were levied by people who were either envious of our ability to do it or threatened by what we were building,” Rory Golod, Compass International Holdings’ president of growth, said. “Looking back, there are things we would maybe want to go back and do [it] differently. It’s hard to build technology for real estate. There are hundreds of MLSs and unique geographies and nuances you have to account for, so it takes time and it’s expensive, but to us it was always worth it.” 

For Golod, the company’s choice to focus on building a platform that helps agents “meaningfully grow their business, save time and create a high quality experience for their clients,” has been an essential part of Compass’s journey to becoming the largest real estate firm in the country.

“We spent a lot of time iterating to get to a complete platform,” Golod said. “Historically, the tools that were built were for specific use cases and no one had ever really put it all into one place. I feel like we have been able to harness the benefit of having a complete platform.” 

In the field, Goodrich said he is already seeing the benefits of having access to a consolidated tech platform. 

“Before we would sign into one dashboard, but then there were a bunch of tiles that brought you to different programs in the tech stack, but the challenge was that the information within those programs did not translate between each other,” he said. “The fact that there is just one database all of the tools are feeding off is great.”

Unexpected advantages with AI

Golod and Compass’s chief technology officer Shay Artzi say that the company has begun to see even more benefits to having a complete platform since they started incorporating more AI, including the recently launched AI Assistant. 

“We started incorporating an AI assistant component in 2023 and it was a glorified chatbot that could help an agent create a listing description, but now it has developed into an actual assistant,” Artzi said. “It’s already connected to over 90 tools in the platform, and we’ve enabled an amazing efficiency on top of the platform we already have.”

For Artzi, the firm’s early decision to create a completely proprietary platform has given it advantages they had never even considered. 

“All of the tools were built to talk to each other, so when we started the AI journey, it was much easier to start connecting the tools because there is no dependency on other tools or us having to change existing API agreements because we are the ones in control of the infrastructure,” he said. 

The “technology sovereignty” Compass crafted for itself over the past decade is one of the things Victor Lund, the managing partner of WAV Group Consulting, believes will play a large role in the firm’s future success.

“You have to have your data in order to power AI, and they have all of that data, so their AI application works really well,” Lund said. “When you need something you just tell the machine, and it does it because Compass manages the entire connectivity. There is no need to flow through different applications and move the request from application to application to get to the outcome.” 

Lund sees this as the difference between renting and owning the technology and he feels it is going to be a massive differentiator now that data ownership is essential for effective AI applications.   

Tech isn’t everything 

While Compass’s technology may give it a leg up in the current AI-arms race in the industry, as well was help it improve the productivity of the firm’s existing agents and be enough to at least spark the interest of agents thinking about swapping firms, agents say great technology alone is not enough to make them change firms.

“For me, the most important thing in selecting a brokerage is my personal alignment with the brand and what the brand stands for,” Goodrich said. “As an operator, I know how important technology is, but I don’t feel like I would switch brokerages just because of technology.” 

While Compass may have used its technology to help it chart its course to the top, time will tell if its Home Platform can also help the firm navigate the unique challenges of staying in the leader’s seat.