Compass continues to make headlines this week as Compass International Holdings has announced the appointment of Rory Golod—previous co-leader of Compass’s brokerage business and chief of staff for CEO Robert Reffkin—to the new role of president of Growth.
As the company moves forward, restructuring and setting a new path after its massive merger with Anywhere Real Estate, Golod’s main focus is the company’s well-known technology platform—rolling it out across the now united portfolio of brands.
“This is going to be a massive company-wide initiative that we’re going to be putting a lot of thought and care into, and really approaching with a real high-touch white-glove experience,” he explained.
The plan is to roll out the platform to all owned and operated brands throughout 2026, and expand to the affiliates and franchises in 2027.
This is Golod and Compass’s main priority as, in his words, “that’s the mechanism that’s going to really help all of our agents grow their businesses, save time and create great experiences to their clients, more so than anything that’s ever been available to them.”
While technology has become central to the way everyone in the world does business, real estate related or not, there are always some nay-sayers who don’t want to evolve as tech evolves.
Golod says that Compass’s approach to bringing its tech platform to the portfolio of brands looks a little different to try to combat the nay-saying.
“We’re taking our learnings from the last decade, and we’re really looking at what has worked well,” he explained. “Unlike years past, we’re sort of now at a point where it seems to be common knowledge among agents across the industry that the Compass Technology platform is the most powerful technology platform that has ever existed for agents to run their businesses on.”
On the circuit
In the conversations he’s had so far, Golod says that there’s “tremendous optimism and excitement on the opportunity of what that represents.”
“Not just the productivity tools, not just the tools that help agents grow their business, but also the access to inventory, all the client tools, everything that exists in what is this incredibly deep, vertically integrated platform,” he continued.
The main step Golod and Compass have taken to address skepticism was creating a thorough onboarding process—an “experience” to learn not just how you can operate the platform, but how you can “use the platform to grow your business, how to articulate the value of these tools in the living room of the client.”
Learning to use new technology is not really “appealing,” as Golod puts it, but you can make the experience appealing by letting agents know the value of the technology by putting extra effort into the onboarding: having someone give a demonstration in person, having coaching and training set up, having in-person events circulate around it, having contests and more.
“I know for a fact a lot of agents want to learn how to grow their business. It just so happens that technology happens to be one of the ways to do it,” he adds. “I think by putting a lot of effort and intent into our comprehensive, highly curated onboarding experience and making that feel amazing, we’re going to actually end up in a position where people are actually wanting to lean into that.”
Golod will also lead M&A and recruitment for the company, for which the plan post-Anywhere merger is to continue to “be a destination for the best agents in this industry.”
Another perk of the merger, Golod notes, is the opportunity to expand across multiple brands now, giving them “far more choice and more options” of brokerage who may want to join.
“Even since our transaction with Anywhere began and became official in the beginning of this year, we’ve already had a number of companies who’ve come to Compass, regional companies and some brokerages around the country that have joined and others, many others who’ve reached out,” he adds. “We have an active pipeline there, and we’re excited about it.”
Selling “seller choice”
In expanding Compass, Golod is bringing all the brands’ offerings to the table and “articulating the value of what the company has created,” and that includes the controversial private listing network. Still divisive to some in the industry, there may be some nay-sayers like those with technology who don’t want to be involved.
Golod’s answer to this? It’s all about choice.
“All we’ve ever advocated for is seller and agent choice, and competition,” he says. “We believe that competition creates better outcomes for everyone, and choice creates competition. If there are people who are skeptical about a strategy, the beautiful thing for them is they have the choice. No one is forced to do anything.”
Golod points to a commitment letter from Reffkin back in the fall that outlined the values for the path ahead, which said that no one would be forced to use anything, their business would have to be earned. He said that this is a strong mindset for Compass to have as it “creates the right incentives and forces you to build the right experience that someone’s going to choose to want to use your tools.”
Addressing some of the industry skepticism overall, Golod adds that there’s been a lot of confusion as “a lot of our competitors and detractors have put narratives out there in the market that they know are not true.” He feels that this stems from a “place of fear and insecurity,” which proves Compass’s point that “what we’ve tapped into is impactful and significant or else people wouldn’t be talking about it.”
“At the end of the day, every agent, their client has the choice if they want to premarket their home. That’s all we’re advocating for. All that I want to see is that choice to be available,” he explains. “That choice creates competition. Competition creates better experiences for agents and consumers, and that’s what we’re leaning into, and that’s really what matters to us.”
