Critics of Compass’ private listings strategy nationally accuse the brokerage of stockpiling inventory. Yet in Texas, many luxury sellers have long preferred off-market deals — and the New York-based firm arrived as a latecomer to the scene.
Over the last few years, Compass has gradually adopted, expanded and publicized a strategy of amassing an inventory of homes separate from the Multiple Listing Service. When Compass announced the launch of a client-facing portal for off-market listings in February of last year, it started a tech race among other national brokerages, with Corcoran, Douglas Elliman and even some Keller Williams franchises designing their own networks for off-market trades.
Rivals like Ryan Schneider, CEO of Anywhere — now under Compass, after its $1.6 billion acquisition — once likened Compass’ Private Exclusives to a “walled garden.” Oppenheim Group President Jason Oppenheim criticized Compass for “hoard[ing] an internal inventory of pocket listings.”
In Texas, though, several established networks for off-market deals operate alongside Compass. As a result, agents who only use Compass’ database of private listings aren’t seeing all the inventory, as Compass CEO Robert Reffkin put it.
Compass, other firms’ agents and an entrepreneur who designed one of these sites describe an off-market system that’s more cooperative than rivalrous.
Texas is among 12 states that do not require parties to disclose sale prices, and it’s the fastest-growing state of the group by raw population numbers, according to World Population Review. Thanks to a combination of permissive laws and accelerating property taxes, Texas’ biggest metro areas have long seen high demand for private trades at the luxury level, brokers say.
“Once you start to get over $2 million, you save some real dollars by not putting it on MLS,” said Greg Walling, an agent with Moreland Properties in Austin.
Compass isn’t the only brokerage operating in Texas where agents swap listings before taking them public. It’s just the biggest one, Walling pointed out.
“In-house transactions occur everywhere. The only reason why it’s coming up with Compass is they now have 33,000 agents in the country,” Walling said.
But despite Compass’ size, it’s far from controlling off-market inventory in Texas, where top Compass agents have to mesh with other off-market networks to stay in the game.
Private luxury deals are particularly common across the Texas Triangle, led by those in Austin’s private market, which has evolved well past the word-of-mouth system. Austin is home to Clubhouse, founded in 2024, and the Austin Luxury Network, founded in 2011, both independent enterprises that facilitate off-market transactions.
“Compass agents are a very big portion of our Clubhouse membership base. It’s very harmonious. … It’s only when listings are syndicated to the third-party sites like Zillow and Redfin where it becomes an issue,” said Clubhouse founder Justin Shapiro.
A certain share of Texas sellers prefer off-market deals for privacy, but the prevailing fiscal reason is to avoid a high property tax bill, Walling said. For these sellers, somewhat paradoxically, agents with a pocket listing do well to list it wherever they can.
“Most good agents want to sell their properties, and the best way to sell your property is to get exposure. If they’re trying to maximize that, they’re going to list it in Clubhouse, ALN and their own brokerage website,” Walling said.
Clubhouse has expanded partially to Dallas, where leading luxury brokerage Allie Beth Allman and Associates commissioned a limited version of the tool. Dallas is also home to Masters of Residential Real Estate, founded in 2018, an interpersonal network of top agents that operates an off-market exchange platform.
Several top Compass agents are in the network, but they share the table with others from Allie Beth Allman, Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s International Real Estate, Ebby Halliday Realtors and Dave Perry-Miller Real Estate. Compass’ Private Exclusives are only a piece of the off-market inventory in Dallas.
In fact, Compass’ Dallas/Fort Worth senior managing director Bryan Pacholski said many of Compass’ off-market deals in Dallas involved an agent from another brokerage.
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