Sotheby’s International Realty’s company-owned brokerages began moving advisors onto Compass International Holdings’ Home Platform on July 1. And if Bradley Nelson’s read is right, some stopped opening their MLS altogether.
The rollout is part of what Compass International Holdings has called the largest technology deployment in real estate history. The massive brokerage is consolidating the tools of roughly 340,000 agents across its network of company-owned brokerages and franchisees into a single system, with the company-owned brokerages getting access to the platform first.
For a luxury brand like Sotheby’s International Realty, built on white-glove service, Nelson said that meant white-glove onboarding to match one-on-one sessions, daily “action labs,” and a six-week deep-dive series called Home Platform Advantage launching this October.
Nelson, Sotheby’s International Realty’s chief marketing officer, talked with Inman about how the brand is protecting its identity inside a shared platform used by competitors under the same corporate roof and why he thinks the real test of Home Platform’s success has nothing to do with software at all.
This interview is part of an ongoing series on Compass International Holdings’ Home Platform rollout, featuring interviews with brokerage executives, real estate agents and industry insiders with the most at stake.
The first part of the series (which you can read here) featured an interview with Coldwell Banker Realty CEO Kamini Lane. The second part (which you can read here) featured an interview with FirstTeam’s Lauren Henss.
Inman: What has early access to the Home Platform looked like so far for Sotheby’s International Realty’s company-owned brokerages?
Bradley Nelson: For Sotheby’s International Realty advisors, the constant feedback we’re hearing is that they’re grateful to have all the technology tools they use in their business every day in one place.
I spoke with a colleague of mine in Los Angeles, one of our top advisors in that market, and he jokingly said he’d forgotten his MLS password because he can do everything he needs on the Home Platform — on his phone, even with the AI assistant while he’s driving.
Six months ago, if he had to do a certain task, he’d go to the MLS for one thing, then Cloud CMA for another, then the CRM, then an email marketing program. He referred to it as the number of distractions introduced into his mind as he completed his work for the day, and how much more focused he is now that everything he needs is in one spot.
Has there been any type of training at Sotheby’s to get agents on board? Can you describe what that looks like?
Every advisor who’s moved onto the Home Platform at Sotheby’s International Realty has done so with a member of our team, white-glove. We’re a luxury brokerage — we have that reputation of service.
So we’ve met with advisors one-on-one or in small groups for onboarding, and we’ve had learning opportunities and “action labs” five days a week, multiple times a day, where our team can bring their laptops and phones, go through training, and then actually try it themselves, so they commit that knowledge to memory faster.
We’re also launching something called the Home Platform Advantage, a six-week series beginning this October, to go into even greater detail on how it can integrate into their business, since the platform has such a broad feature set.
Compass says there’s no mandate to adopt the Home Platform. What does that look like in practice? Is there still an expectation to adopt it?
We believe in giving everyone choice. Agents should be able to choose what they use to run their business. Sellers should have a choice in how they market their property.
Bradley Nelson
What’s been really encouraging to me is that shortly before we introduced the Home Platform, we did demos for all our advisors, and the emails I got afterward were: “How can I get it faster? Can I raise my hand to be a beta tester? Can I be first in line? What can I do to help?”
Often with software changes, you’re forcing people along — “the old vendor’s expiring, you have to move by this date.” Here, there’s just been so much enthusiasm and excitement. It reminded me — I don’t know that an agent ever gets excited about software, but they do get excited about winning.
As some of these early success stories have started to spread around the company, I think that’s encouraged others. A colleague of mine in Santa Fe, New Mexico, was recently migrating his contact database, and one of his past clients was flagged by a feature called “Likely to Sell,” which analyzes various data points and says, “This person has a strong likelihood of being interested in selling; you might want to reconnect.”
My colleague reached out to that past client just to check in, and it turned out the client was planning a move out of state. That led to a listing appointment for a property valued around $4 million, and also a referral through the Sotheby’s International Realty Global Referral Network to a colleague in Texas. It was a really fast win, and when a story like that gets shared, it gives other agents confidence to learn more about the CRM functionality and see if it’s something they’d want to use.
How do you protect your distinct brand while being on a platform that so many different agents across Compass International Holdings will use?
I really think of this like the iPhone. I’d assume 99 percent of real estate agents at any brand — Compass International Holdings or not — use either an iPhone or an Android for their cell phone. The hardware itself isn’t a competitive differentiator; it’s what you do with it.
One of the things we did at Sotheby’s International Realty was, within the marketing center, load in all of our proprietary brand marketing — our value proposition, how we curate and present properties, how we capitalize on our relationship with Sotheby’s auction house, how we help clients manage not just the sale of their home but their art or jewelry collections, and so on.
We’ve really customized the Home Platform with content exclusive to a Sotheby’s International Realty advisor, and I think that’s helped us maintain brand differentiation.
Compass has called this the largest tech deployment in real estate history. From where you sit at Sotheby’s International Realty, does it feel that massive, or is it really more of an upgrade to newer, more powerful tech?
No, I think that characterization — the largest technology deployment in the industry — is very accurate. It’s incredibly exciting to me to be free from managing multiple third-party vendors with competing priorities, evolving business models, and different levels of investment in their own tech stacks. That was incredibly complicated.
Historically, you’d upgrade one piece of your technology stack at a time, maybe over five years. What makes the Home Platform so unique is that we’re upgrading every single piece of the technology simultaneously, because we’re bringing it all into one place.
A year from now, what’s the metric, or the thing, that would tell you it was a success getting people onto the Home Platform?
Success, to me, looks like our advisors using the platform more and more because it’s improved their lives. You can’t force real estate advisors to do anything. It’s just not possible. But if they say, “Oh my gosh, I have an extra hour in my day because of the technology,” and they’re using the AI assistant while they’re in the car, then they’ll use it more and more naturally. It’s really about them using it because it’s made something in their life better.
Does the brokerage track internal metrics, such as agent adoption?
We’re very focused on agent feedback. We’re certainly monitoring how many agents have decided to use the platform, but we’re also collecting an obsessive amount of feedback to make sure we’re improving the platform for them.
That’s where a lot of these examples I’ve cited come from. It’s feedback like, “I had an opportunity to go on this $4 million listing appointment that I wouldn’t have known about otherwise.”
Another example: Sotheby’s International Realty has had office exclusives for as long as I can remember — sellers who wanted to market their homes with discretion. You always had to search two places: the MLS for on-market properties, and our internal intranet for off-market exclusives. The Home Platform brings both data sources together in one place.
So regardless of how a seller wants to market their home — on the active MLS or privately — you can now do that search in one spot. These are examples of how our advisors say the platform is making a real difference in their day-to-day work with clients.
If you could speak directly to an agent at your brokerage who might be reading this, what would you want to tell them about the home platform and this transition?
If I were speaking with an agent from Sotheby’s International Realty, I’d want them to know: no one’s trying to change how they do their business. We deeply respect the professionalism, integrity, creativity and high standards our agents consistently uphold.
What we want to do with the Home Platform is provide more seamless support and make them look even better in front of their clients, based on how well-organized the information is and how consistent the digital experience is at every step of the transaction, start to finish. I think the Home Platform can deliver that and make the real estate advisor look as professional as they already are to their client. It’s not about changing the day-to-day. It’s about enhancing it.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
