While real estate sites like Zillow and Trulia have dominated how people list and find properties online, NYC-based startup Compass is revolutionizing the real estate industry as a digital one-stop shop.
In September, Compass made waves with a $50 million Series C funding round to expand to cities across the U.S., scoring an $800 million valuation in the process. Today, the company launched the first ever real-time residential market report app, which will provide customers and agents with up-to-the-minute housing analytics.
The app, called “Compass Markets,” rolled out in the App store with statistical data for Manhattan and Brooklyn, and plans to quickly scale to additional markets.
It allows users to customize market searches by neighborhood and housing type, including the number of bedrooms and price range. Once a user’s search is customized, the app provides access to up to date insights on active, in contract and sold listings. These statistics include comprehensive data on the median price of listings, median negotiability, days on market, price-per-square-foot and the amount of listings available.
The app also allows real estate agents to create market reports based on their client’s wish lists, convert to a PDF and share the report easily via email.
“Wall Street doesn’t have to wait for once a quarter updates of the Dow Jones Index, and the real estate community shouldn’t have to wait that long for housing information either. 'Compass Markets' will provide a moving picture of the market so that consumers and their agents can work together to make better, more informed decisions on their real estate journeys,” said Robert Reffkin, Compass Founder & CEO, in a statement.
The “Compass Markets” app is one of many significant initiatives led by Compass that are shaking up real estate. On the company’s website, Compass listings appear in a Google Maps-esque interface, offering a much cleaner alternative to services like Craigslist. Users can also schedule in-person viewings on Compass, which organizes a digital itinerary for prospective renters and buyers. Compass also provides a series of “Neighborhood Guides” that provide users with insights into specific, city neighborhoods.
While Compass offers intuitive and simplified consumer-facing technology, it also boasts impressive technology on the agent-side. The platform, which not only draws on many different sources of data which then provides supercharged information to price homes and aggregate property listings, also allows agents to easily track and manage their relationships with clients using this data. The technology has attracted over 350 agents to the company, who work exclusively with Compass and receive commissions, just as they would at a traditional real estate firm.
Compass was founded in 2012 by repeat entrepreneur Ori Allon (an engineer with a search technology track record at Google, Twitter, and Microsoft) and former Goldman Sachs executive, Robert Reffkin. The partners started the company with the hopes of creating a better way for people to find and rent apartments in New York’s competitive real estate market using hyperlocal information networks.
Compass has already disrupted the real estate industry in NYC and D.C., and now handles over $1 billion in listings. Compass’s market has been saturated by the extremely low vacancy rate in Manhattan, and the company, acting as a broker, totals 0-15% per completed rental deal. Compass profits 6 percent per completed home sale.
With its latest round of funding, the company is now planning to target cities including San Francisco, Boston, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, and Houston, and will roll out the “Compass Markets” apps in those areas accordingly.
