Well known island realtor Scott Reynolds has moved his 21-person team to Compass, a nationwide real estate powerhouse founded by veterans of Goldman Sachs and the biggest tech companies in Silicon Valley that The Real Deal says is the second-largest brokerage in the U.S.
Reynolds, who started his career in telecom engineering, says he decided to make the move from ONE Sotheby’s when Compass recruited him because of the company’s integrated, “end-to-end” technology platform. The platform simplifies complex tasks such as preparing market reports for sellers and keeping track of closing details, freeing agents to spend more time seeking and interacting with homebuyers and sellers, according to Reynolds.
“Our purpose is to replace the complex, antiquated, paper-driven workflow [of traditional real estate transactions] with a with a seamless, end to end, all-digital platform that empowers real estate agents . . . who are the most inspiring group of entrepreneurs in the world,” says company co-founder and CEO Robert Reffkin, 41, a former Goldman Sachs VP and White House Fellow who worked in the Treasury Department during the George W. Bush Administration.
That effort is backed up by an impressive group of executives that includes co-founder and Chief Strategist Ori Allon, former Director of Engineering at Twitter, and Chief Technology Officer Joseph Sirosh who managed Amazon’s Global Inventory Platform before serving as Chief Technology Officer for AI – artificial intelligence – at Microsoft.
All real estate agents and brokers use online tools at this point, and many brokers have sophisticated content management software, but the systems often have been pieced together over time, instead of purpose built from the ground up. And few if any brokers can match the technological muscle of Compass, which employs more than 1,000 engineers, according to Mercedes Saewitz, principle broker for Compass in Florida.
Those engineers are continually getting feedback from Compass agents and using that information to refine and expand the online platform, according to Reffkin, speaking in a video presentation provided by Reynolds.
Agent-friendly features Reynolds highlighted include automatic commission payments, where money shows up in agent’s account within 24 hours after closing without any action on the agent’s part; a simple, online spreadsheet that shows all of an agent’s deals categorized by the stage they are at, with deal icons that open up to all the details to date; an AI function that identifies people in the community who are likely to be selling their homes in the near future; and a dedicated back-office team of specialist on call to meet a wide range of agent needs at the click of a mouse – from setting up headshot photo shoots to setting up new devices.
Consumer-friendly features, include prepaid credit cards sellers can apply for to do up to $75,000 in home improvements, such as painting, new flooring or landscaping prior to listing.
“All the statistics show that a house in top condition nets more for the seller,” says Reynolds, who runs his team in partnership with his wife Janice. “So, this is a big help to sellers.”
Compass also provides easy-to access bridge loans that are a great tool for sellers in the current market. If they qualify for the program, a seller who sees a house they want doesn’t have to wait to close on the sale of their own home before snapping it up.
Compass’s foundational focus on technology and access to capital have paid off in rapid increases in market share and revenue.
According to Compass’s S-1 form, filed in March prior a public offering in April, the company’s revenues have grown more than tenfold since 2017.
Reffkin says the company’s 20,000-plus agents operating in hundreds of cities handled 145,000 transactions worth $150 billion in 2020, generating $3.7 billion in operating revenue, up from $370 million in 2017.
So far, Compass’s custom-built technology seems to be paying off for The Reynolds Team, too, which has sold 135 homes worth $50.5 million since joining the company in April. Year-to-date, the Reynolds Team has closed 223 deals worth $84.3 million, up from $72.8 million in business in all of 2020, according to figures provided by the company.
Scott Reynolds has been selling real estate since 2002, when he became an agent in Cleveland, Ohio. After following Janice’s parents to Vero in the mid-2000s, he worked first for Coldwell Banker and then the old Norris & Company. He later moved to Dale Sorensen Real Estate, and then ONE Sotheby’s International Realty, building his team along the way.
Today, he, his 13 agents and 8 other staffers, occupy a 3,000-square-foot suite of offices in the Transocean building on the island – just one of a fast-growing contingent of Compass offices in Florida.
Compass is expanding more rapidly in Florida than in any other part of the country, according to Saewitz, who says the company now has 37 offices and more than 1,700 agents in the state.
She says Scott Reynolds and his team are “our founding agents in Vero Beach,” where they will be “an integral part of Compass growing in this market.”