Reffkin’s confidence in this comes from the “historic alliance” he announced between Compass and Rocket companies Thursday afternoon. As part of the partnership, Compass’ Coming Soon Listings, and ultimately the Private Exclusive inventory, will be released Redfin from March 16. The listings will not show days in market or price history and agents will be required to obtain written permission from their sellers in order to syndicate the listings to Redfin. The program is currently only available to Compass agents, but the company said it will be available to agents of any CIH brand later this year. Reffkin also noted that this three-year partnership is exclusive, meaning no other brokerage looking to market their upcoming listings or exclusive listings more broadly will be able to make a similar deal with Rocket.
“I think this alliance marks the end of the restrictions that MLSs have placed on agents and sellers in the way they market homes,” Reffkin said Thursday evening during his company’s Q4 2025 earnings call with investors and analysts. “Because if they restrict the agent and the home seller, they will also restrict Rocket. I don’t see a scenario where the MLS will continue to enforce these restrictive rules with Rocket and Redfin on our side, because we now have more resources.”
The deal will expose NAR, Reffkin says
Reffkin also argued that the alliance undermines the “moral narrative” that Compass is hiding listings through its three-phase marketing strategy, including Compass Coming Soon Listings.
“We’re going to give our public listings to Rocket-Redfin, publicly searchable [by] 60 million people,” he said. “What’s going to happen in each of these markets is that [the] MLS is going to fine our agents up to $5,000. The agent is going to ask if we can help them, and we will, but what is the MLS going to tell the public? Are you telling me you’re fining the agent $5,000 for publicly marketing the listing on a site searchable by 60 million people? That you do that to protect fair housing? Are you doing that to protect transparency? Are you doing that to make sure we don’t have double-ended deals? Or are you not doing this to protect your transparency, but [to] protect your own business model? That will bring it to light.”
That’s why he sees the partnership as a win for “seller’s choice” because it “gives homeowners flexibility in how they market their homes and doesn’t subject homeowners to negative listing views.”
A victory for the consumer
According to Reffkin, within a year CIH should have more than 200,000 exclusive private listings on its sites that are not available on other sites. Reffkin noted that Compass’ Private Exclusive listing platform will be available for use by agents who join through CIH Real estate everywhere acquisition in July this year. Before CCP went into effect in 2018, Reffkin said 90% of Compass listings started out as publicly searchable listings on the brokerage’s website.
According to Reffkin, this “moved the consumer [the firm’s] site as any normal business would if they were not restricted by non-governmental entities like NAR.” However, if CCP enforcement becomes a thing of the past, as Reffkin predicts, his company will gain more exclusive private listings, driving more potential buyers to the website.
Leaders of Rocket and Redfin
The potential for more buyer leads coming through Compass.com, as well as the partnership with Rocket, is driving more agents to join Compass and other CIH brands, Reffkin said. During Thursday’s call, he said five agents had already reached out asking if they could join Compass because of the leads.
“We have 1.2 million Rocket Mortgage and Redfin leads that will come to our agents as part of this,” Reffkin said.
At the end of 2025, Compass had 21,190 principal agents, an increase of 19.4%. As of the first quarter of 2026, following the completion of the Anywhere acquisition, CIH will have 340,000 agents and more than 700,000 listings across all nine brands under the CIH umbrella.
Integration with Anywhere is going well
During Thursday’s call, Reffkin also discussed how integration efforts are progressing related to the Anywhere merger.
“I want to start by saying how pleased I am with how well our two management teams are working together,” said Reffkin. “Since lockdown, we have made great progress deploying best practice and integration, including setting up a transformation office that will be a single control tower to ensure we achieve our objectives, establishing a clear roadmap to create a more efficient organization across all our business units and quickly creating clarity on the scope and layers of the organization.”
In the fourth quarter of 2025, Compass incurred $10.6 million in costs related to the Anywhere merger and integration. But while the merger will cost the company a lot of money, Reffkin also discussed the “cost synergies” he and his team are exploring. According to Reffkin, the CIH team has “acted aggressively on synergies.”
“In just seven weeks, we have already achieved $175 million of our cost synergy target; heavy headcount increases and supplier consolidation are already underway,” said Reffkin.
According to Reffkin, these actions were taken “at various points in the first quarter,” and he warned investors and analysts that “there will be only modest upside for the first quarter.”
While Reffkin did not discuss specifics regarding workforce consolidation efforts, he did mention Anywhere’s technology team as an area CIH was exploring to realize potential cost savings.
“Historically, Anywhere has capitalized a large amount of technology labor on the balance sheet, approximately $80 million by 2025, and as part of our cost synergy work, a significant portion of the projects that have been capitalized in the past will be cut as we shift technology focus to the Compass platform,” Reffkin said. “Therefore, I assume that just over half of the roughly $100 million in synergies that will be realized by 2026 will be reflected as reduced [capital expenditures] in 2026 and the remaining amounts will be shown as reduced [operating expenses] by 2026.”
In an emailed statement about the reports of layoffs at CIH, a CIH spokesperson wrote that the company is “continually evaluating” its business needs to “effectively align resources and focus on the areas that will create the most value” for the company’s agents.
“Post-merger adjustments are being made to strengthen our operations and focus on our strategic priorities,” the spokesperson added.
As CIH looks ahead, it will certainly hope to find more ways to reduce costs, as brokerage Compass lost $42.5 million in 4th quarter 2025, compared to a net loss of $40.4 million a year ago. This increase came despite a 23.1% annual increase in revenue to $1.7 billion, a 19.7% annual increase in the number of transactions to 60,328 transactions and a 21.6% annual increase in gross transaction value to $65.6 billion.
For the full year, Compass generated revenue of $6.962 billion, compared to $5.629 billion a year ago, and posted a net loss of $58.7 million, compared to a net loss of $154.5 million in 2024.
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