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by Chantal Peterson Chantal Peterson is a writer, travel enthusiast and a fine artist. She runs a content marketing business for wellness brands, and is an occasional contributor to various local and national publications. Contact Chantal at mypenlives@gmail.com or @moivelle on Instagram.
COMPASS REAL ESTATE
Agent Team suding//murphy Partners
California Coastal Cleanup Day at Hendry’s Beach (left to right) Camille Palmer, Lindsey Neal, Paige Marshall, Brittany Lough, Chelsea Cole, Beverly Palmer, Nicole Eva, Stan Tabler, Teresa Eggemeyer
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ince Compass, a technologydriven real estate platform, opened its doors in Montecito in early 2016, their popularity has spread like wildfire and put them on the map as the areas newest “it agency” – and they are taking the local market by storm. Word on the street is that Compass is the fastestgrowing real estate brand in the country. Compass landed in their Montecito office at 1283 Coast Village Circle (the former site of the now-closed Orfalea Foundation) and grew so fast, they had to quickly add more space across the street at 1280 Coast Village Circle. Compass also has a lease on 1101 Coast Village Road near Butterfly Lane. According to John Nisbet, a 30-year veteran of the real estate industry who manages Montecito and Santa Barbara locations, Compass is also taking a plot in downtown Santa Barbara and eyeing an office space on Upper State Street. All this is to say: looks as if Compass is playing for keeps. At the Montecito offices, they currently have 25 agents and six fulltime staff (and growing), with more than $170 million in current listings and reported $77M in sales already (that includes a combo of buyer and seller representation). The company’s success is of little surprise, with a core team hailing from numerous industries and all experts in their fields. The founders bring diverse yet complimentary skills to the table: Ori Allon, a talented technologist who started and sold companies to Google and Twitter, and Robert Reffkin, a
Agent Susan Pate
Agent Nick Svensson
former senior member of Goldman Sachs and White House Fellow. The agents at Compass come to the agency for a variety of reasons, one of the most prominent being that the brokerage utilizes top-notch new technology that offers customized marketing support said to “make the process of buying, selling, or renting a home intelligent and seamless.” Nisbet says Compass’s software integrates all available listings in one simple place for agents, allowing them to complete tasks that used to take hours, in minutes. Earlier in 2016, they also launched the first national real-time market report
Agent Erin Muslera
via a mobile app. It’s called Compass Markets, and the app is designed to replace the stale quarterly market reports with up-to-the-minute housing data so consumers and agents can make better real estate decisions. This is a gamechanger in many ways. Also cool and innovative: they recently rolled out a global sports and entertainment division catering to the
specific real estate needs of celebrities and professional athletes. A smart niche to target, and it will be interesting to see how they do with it. Originally a New York-based platform that launched in 2013, Compass has basically been killing it, landing offices and tons of clients in some of the top locations in the country, scooping up a healthy chunk of the luxury market. The company is currently valued at more than $1B, after completing its fourth funding round of $75 million. Leah Sternberg, who leads the Pasadena office, says, “Compass is elevating the way the entire real estate industry operates not only here in California, but across all of the markets we are in.” Driven by its significant accomplishments, Compass began its national expansion last year, opening offices in Washington, D.C., Miami, Boston, the Hamptons, Aspen, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. The Coast Village Road office will open after renovations are complete, Nisbet said, and Compass is expanding so much that it might just keep the current Montecito office on Coast Village Circle, as workspace for additional agents.