Kamini Lane is back where she started.
Today, she serves as president and CEO of Coldwell Banker Realty — a role she assumed in 2023. But Lane previously worked as a general manager and later a regional president at Compass.
Now, she’s back under the Compass umbrella thanks to Compass’ purchase of Coldwell Banker owner Anywhere Real Estate.
The merger gives Lane a unique view of the megabrokerage at a time when Compass is wielding its power to win debates over when, how and where real estate listings are marketed to the public.
Lane is set to speak at Inman Connect San Diego later this summer. She spoke with Inman about the pressing issues facing her company and the industry at large.
Inman: You were with Compass when you first started in real estate, and we’re now several months into the merger. What’s different about Compass today — other than size — and what’s stayed the same?
Kamini Lane: I joined Compass in the very beginning of 2019 — I had signed on in 2018 and started in January of 2019, so that was seven years ago now. At that point, the technology was very nascent. I was lucky enough to see many of the cornerstone products in the Home platform being ideated and built and then launched, and I was lucky enough to participate pretty deeply in some of those processes.
What’s different today is that the Home platform has truly come to life as the best — and really only — end-to-end platform in real estate that was built 100 percent for real estate agents. Back then, that was our dream. The major difference is that it actually came to fruition.
What’s the same is the company’s complete focus on the end customer. We used to say all the best ideas come from real estate agents. That foundational thinking is really what enabled the Home platform to become something that’s very valuable. It’s very tempting to just build the coolest, most exciting thing rather than truly building for your customer. That ethos of building for the customer — with customer feedback in mind, with the customer use case and experience in mind — has really stayed pretty much exactly the same since I started at Compass.
On listing distribution, does Coldwell Banker have a direct feed to Zillow, separate from the IDX?
We don’t have a direct feed to Zillow, but all of our listings that are syndicated by the MLS — by the IDX feed — go to Zillow, unless there’s a situation like MRED, where MRED severed the feed to Zillow.
Our point of view is very much that every single seller deserves a curated marketing plan for their home that they craft in conjunction with their agent. One size does not fit all. Every seller and every agent deserves choice, and they deserve to be the ones dictating how their home is brought to market. That shouldn’t be Zillow dictating, nor should it be the brokerage dictating. We believe in curation. We believe in choice, because again, the vast majority of Americans have the vast majority of their net worth tied up in their home. It’s only for them to say how that should go to market.
What do you make of the moves by select MLSs that have opened membership to anyone, anywhere and have also partnered with Compass to power what’s essentially become a national private listing network?
What’s behind it is a strong belief in seller choice. No portal should be the one dictating how a seller handles their most valuable asset.
MRED is the perfect example. It’s a strong statement to say: if a seller, in conjunction with their agent, has chosen to list in the private listing network, that’s their choice. For Zillow to say they’re then going to ban that listing once it comes on the open market is Zillow trying to dictate how that seller treats their most valuable asset. Zillow doesn’t own that asset. Zillow has no proprietary [interest] over that asset. The strategy is the seller’s and the agent’s. So I think what’s behind these moves is really standing up for seller choice.
Do Coldwell Banker agents have access to all of the Home platform now, or is some of it still coming online for them?
We have our pilot launch in July, which is very, very exciting. Then the network-wide launch is in September. That is a major focus of mine right now: helping our real estate professionals unlock the fullest potential of their entrepreneurial ventures through the technology and the Home platform.
I got my real estate license recently and went through the process myself as a buyer. It gave me a different perspective on how valuable this kind of integrated tech is — and how fragmented things get when you’re piecing together tools from Dotloop, ShowingTime and other services, some of which are now owned by Zillow. Do you think we’re in an era where brokerages are trying to reclaim authority over the transaction process?
What we say about the Home platform is that the innovation is in the integration. Buying or selling a home is a complicated process — as you can personally attest to. There are a lot of forms, a lot of steps, a lot of disclosures, a lot of risk. It’s the most important emotional and financial transaction of most people’s lives, and the vast majority of Americans have the vast majority of their net worth tied up in their home. Small mistakes have large repercussions.
When you have everything integrated into one platform, there’s less risk for the agent and for their client. Everything is in one place, everything is tracked, everything is integrated — and that integration is part of ensuring a more seamless experience and de-risking it.
Our ethos — and this has really been Coldwell Banker Realty’s ethos for a long time — is that our agents should be spending their energy on the client and the relationship. Making sure they’re getting maximum value for their seller, making sure their buyer is getting into the right home. We’ve created a platform that is easy to use so that it’s not sucking up disproportionate time — so they’re not going from one vendor to the next, printing everything out, making sure the address in the ZIP code is exactly right in each form, or that they’ve filled out the most current lead paint disclosure. Because that stuff gets missed.
