| There's a bit of confusion in the comments a about the company. I had researched it a bit while interviewing there so I want to clarify although what I say will not be complete. First compass is a real estate agency. They have agents (realtors) all over the country and the way they make money is through real estate commission. To the extent that they have a public facing real estate search site akin to zillow, I believe the point is that it connects people with compass agents to represent them (whereas I think on zillow/trulia is just connects you to randos who paid for leads) However the primary angle is that compass builds great tools for their agents. So the idea is that the tech makes the agents better at their jobs which in turn helps them service buyers and sellers better which in turn drives business. I can see this angle make sense. We are currently house shopping (not via a compass agent) and the agency's it system is clearly not that great for either us or the agent (eg when they send us listings it's not that smooth). Presumably would have been way better tech wise if we went w compass. So that's the angle I think. Their tech and product people are solid, from my conversation. Lots of ex FAANG folks. And finally there are comments below that don't understand why a realtor can charge the commission they do - it's because they are enabling you to navigate a high stakes, non commodity transaction and their local knowledge/network/etc matters. You could certainly try to do it yourself but unless you are going to dedicate full time to it you will just never buy anything except in a truly buyer's markets which we are not in. |