Hot on the heels of a $1 billion-plus valuation, high-tech brokerage Compass has blitzed into San Francisco, launching an office led by elite agents from two national real estate brands. The launch comes after an aggressive push by Compass to vacuum up top talent from local competitors — an expansion strategy that’s put some brokerages on their heels in luxury markets across the U.S.
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Compass, a high-tech brokerage, has raised an additional $75 million in a funding round that values the company at more than $1 billion, according to a person familiar with the deal. Compass will use the truckload of cash to “to accelerate our growth into new markets and inject transformative technology to improve the experience for consumers and agents,” Ori Allon, founder and executive chairman of Compass, said in a statement.
On the streets of real estate gossip-land, you hear two contrary narratives about New York-based hyper-funded Compass. It is successfully powering through its growing pains, grabbing up market share from the old guard. Or, it may implode under the weight of its spectacular growth.
“$200 million is no problem for Mr. Sekiguchi,” said billionaire real estate developer Takeshi Sekiguchi, speaking of himself in the third person about his investment in SRE Matrix, which is a discount brokerage that he founded in 2014. SRE stands for “Smart Real Estate.” A company spokesperson confirmed that Sekiguchi has poured an additional $100 million into SRE, which purportedly brings its total funding — all provided by Sekiguchi — to $200 million.
Pacific Union CEO Mark McLaughlin is used to seeing some of his top agents approached by other brokerages. In a bid to give his agents a competitive edge, the CEO and his chief technology advisor, Alexander Paine, are aiming to equip agents with more detailed information about buyers in their markets so they can compete more effectively for listings in low-inventory markets.