In residential real estate, biggest does not mean best
By Hilary Saunders
Another blockbuster headline has dropped: Compass agreed to acquire Anywhere in an all-stock deal, valuing the company around $1.6B. The combined company is being billed as a ~$10B platform spanning ~340,000 professionals across 120 territories.
Here’s my take, as someone who cares deeply about this business: bigger is not always better in residential real estate. Quality beats quantity every time.
Real estate is the most local, high-stakes purchase most families make. It’s so far from one-size-fits all. Which is why the long-stated dream of any one company becoming the “Amazon of real estate” has never materialized, and I hope it never does. E-commerce thrives on standardization, but home decisions are made street by street, relationship by relationship.
So when the headlines celebrate “biggest,” it’s worth asking a different question: does any of this make the process better for clients or for the full-time professionals who serve them?
When bigger delivers less and everyone loses
The economics at big traditional brokerages often prioritize a big headcount: high splits for low production and fee revenue across a massive base. It’s like a gym that’s only profitable because so few members actually show up. There’s no incentive to be great. In fact, they’d prefer you to stay mediocre.
That may help balance a P&L. It does nothing to elevate residential real estate.
This industry doesn’t need more part-timers, which is exactly what this bigger-is-better model encourages. We actually need more serious, devoted professionals, more agents who hold themselves to an incredibly high standard and work relentlessly for their clients. That’s how we earn and keep public trust. Post-NAR settlement, trust is in the gutter and there’s a steep climb upward. A company attempting to control more than 300,000 agents can’t possibly cater to the very best among them.
Originality beats uniformity
Right now, Compass is saying the legacy Anywhere brands will remain intact. That may be true, and that’s a huge win … for now. But the thing is, at massive corporations, the desire for ‘efficiencies’ and cost-savings always arise, and sameness tends to creep in over time.
The last thing this industry needs is more sameness.
Consumers don’t hire parent companies with an international footprint; they hire people they trust, people who know this neighborhood’s amenities and that school district’s boundary quirk. Local, owner-led brands are built to deliver that level of specificity in a way massive conglomerates just can’t match. Pricing, positioning, photography, launch strategy, it can all be tuned precisely to the micro-market and the moment.
When you’re part of a traditional brokerage, you’re always playing by someone else’s rules that are optimized for the 50% of agents who sell one (or fewer!) houses a year. But local ownership keeps decisions close to the door.
That’s how clients get what they actually hire us for: smarter pricing from someone with hyper-local knowledge, fewer surprises, and a relationship with a professional whose judgment is shaped by the community they know by heart.
As brands get bigger, lean into local
Your clients crave local expertise. It’s the core thing they’re looking for in that listing meeting and beyond. Across all industries, we’re seeing consumers preferring to work with locally owned companies.
So in a world of increased consolidation and sameness, lean into the things only you can know and do in your specific market. Let your marketing, your voice, and your client experience be unmistakably yours. Don’t settle for being just another Amazon distributor when you can be the beloved local boutique.
Don’t get distracted by “biggest.” The future belongs to the agents who choose to be the “best”: unique, locally rooted, and relentlessly professional.
Keep real estate weird. Keep it local.
Be Legendary
If you’re a top-producing agent who has ever wondered what your business could become, we’d love to show you what’s possible.
