Reffkin floats idea for national MLS, says Compass previo...

Compass CEO kept his sights on NAR, MLSs, which he says are too restrictive, and Zillow in his call for widespread reform of the existing status quo in real estate.

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Compass is at war with what it calls “organized real estate,” and at an Inman event in New York City on Tuesday, CEO Robert Reffkin laid out his battle plan.

In his first public comments since Compass closed on its acquisition of Anywhere Real Estate, Reffkin set his sights squarely on the National Association of Realtors, Zillow and multiple listing services that he deems unfair to real estate agents.

“I believe we shouldn’t have 518 MLSs,” he said. “I believe the brokerages should come together and create a common MLS that brokerages and agents own, and treats everyone fairly and equally without fines and bans.”

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He likened the concept to how banks cooperated to restructure Visa and take it public around 2008.

“If every brokerage came together and created one national MLS … owned by brokerages — ”

“And by the way, I’d love it if Brian Donnellan at BrightMLS was CEO of it,” he said. “Great, let’s go do this. Let’s create one national MLS that can work across the country, and then they create a new super site. That’s what should happen.”

Reffkin made his comments during an onstage interview with Brad Inman on the first morning of Inman Connect New York on Tuesday.

The comments pulled back the curtain on the direction that Reffkin and his superbrokerage want to take in order to change the status quo for how real estate in the U.S. is listed and marketed.

Reffkin ignored a quip by Inman, who suggested Compass could buy Homes.com from CoStar to compete directly with Zillow and the top three real estate search portals.

Instead, his call was for a neutral listing database with rules he suggested would allow real estate agents to market properties how they want.

“The way that it should work is just like Visa,” he said. “Compass will have no vote. Compass will have no disproportionate ownership when it comes to national holdings. And it will have an independent board that will work independently in every way.”

Declining a deal with Zillow

Reffkin also shared insights about an alleged deal he says Zillow offered to Compass last year.

Reffkin said that Zillow offered Compass up to $1.6 billion “if we prevented our agents from marketing off Zillow.”

Zillow’s Errol Samuelson at Inman Connect New York.

Zillow enacted a policy that aimed to prevent large brokerages from creating, and MLSs from allowing, private listing networks if the listings weren’t also marketed on Zillow.

The policy was a move to ensure that consumers could see the broadest possible source of active real estate listings on Zillow’s platforms, a move that the company believed would also allow it to sell more products to real estate agents.

Reffkin put it another way.

“They’re trying to penalize the agents in brokerage firms to force people to list everything on Zillow,” Reffkin said. “So then they offer $1.3 billion, $1.6 billion. And I said no.”

“My wife said, ‘Don’t sell out the agents,’” he said.

Compass, in turn, sued Zillow in an attempt to stop it from enforcing its policy. The case has yet to be resolved.

The alleged offer was referenced in Compass’ findings of fact and conclusions of law, which was filed in mid-December.

That filing referred to the alleged offer as a “potential partnership” between Compass and Zillow that included “a variety of product offerings and benefits that Zillow predicted would result in Compass earning an additional $1.3 to $1.6 billion annually and doubling Compass’ market share.”

READ: ZILLOW’S SAMUELSON HITS BACK

Reffkin specifically referenced a sworn deposition by Zillow CFO Jeremy Hofmann as the source of the proposed deal.

A portion of the deposition that Inman obtained on Tuesday shows that Hofmann acknowledged the attempted potential “revenue uplift” of $1.3 billion to $1.6 billion if Compass and Zillow reached a deal.

Hofmann said that “we had one meeting about it. They weren’t particularly interested, and we never really like honed in on what the numbers could be.”

The comments are in line with internal Zillow documents that were included in the filing and reported on exclusively by Inman.

Zillow’s documents showed that the company was arranging meetings with representatives from the largest real estate brokerages and franchises in the nation early last year in an attempt to secure more partnerships that involved securing direct listing feeds between the brokerages and the portal.

Some of the documents appeared to suggest that Zillow offered to send buyer leads directly to the listing brokerage as part of the partnership.

The documents showed that eXp and NextHome reached agreements with Zillow. It’s not clear what services or benefits were included in the partnerships or what other companies may have reached agreements.

Email Taylor Anderson

Topics: Anywhere | Brad Inman | Compass | MLS | NAR | Zillow Show Comments Hide Comments Sign up for Inman’s Morning Headlines What you need to know to start your day with all the latest industry developments Sign me up By submitting your email address, you agree to receive marketing emails from Inman. Success! Thank you for subscribing to Morning Headlines. Read Next