Compass’s Anywhere Acquisition Gets It More Than Just Scale

Compass and Anywhere announced a merger on Monday. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg)

Key Points

About This Summary

• Compass and Anywhere on Monday announced a merger creating a combined company with an enterprise value of approximately $10 billion.
• Compass will acquire Anywhere in an all-stock transaction, paying $13.01 per share, with closing expected in the second half of 2026.
• The merger unites the two largest brokerages by residential sales volume, creating a company with roughly 18% market share.

Compass stock sold off on news of the real estate brokerage’s merger with Anywhere. But Wall Street sees the new company’s scale as potentially transformative.

The Anywhere deal is Compass’s latest in a string of acquisitions—and perhaps the most consequential. The deal will unite the largest and second-largest brokerages by residential sales volume, according to Real Estate Almanac data.

Compass is paying an 84% premium in an all-stock purchase—likely one of the reasons the company’s stock dropped more than 15% after the deal was announced Monday.

The merger would give the combined company about 18% market share, says KBW analyst Ryan Tomasello.

“It’s a pretty game-changing acquisition that probably has a meaningful impact on the trajectory that the industry evolves in over the next decade,” he says. The combined company’s market share “gives them a lot of leverage to be able to continue to drive innovation with a more vertically integrated homebuying and selling experience.”

It also comes as stagnation in the housing market is driving consolidation in the industry. A number of tech-enabled real estate companies are investing in building all-in-one housing transaction platforms even as fewer homes than usual change hands. Existing-home sales this year are unlikely to improve meaningfully from the roughly 30-year lows seen in both 2023 and 2024.

The bid to join Anywhere’s numerous owned and franchised brands—including Corcoran, Coldwell Banker, and Sotheby’s—with Compass’s agents and tech platform is a “high-risk, high-return” move to grow in an otherwise languid housing market, says Susan Wachter, professor of real estate at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. “Otherwise, this market is in the doldrums, and there is no look forward to growth that is convincing for shareholders.”

Compass isn’t the only company growing into a bigger fish in a long-shrinking real estate pond. Rocket, known for its mortgage origination platform, announced deals to buy both real estate brokerage Redfin and mortgage servicer Mr. Cooper earlier this year.

Zillow, meanwhile, has been growing its multifamily, agent technology, and mortgage offerings in a bid to capture more aspects of the residential real estate transaction. Barron’s in June examined how consolidation in a slow housing market could ultimately change homebuying.

Real estate companies’ transformations into more vertically integrated businesses has been long in the making, notes Columbia Business School real estate professor Tomasz Piskorski—but the bad macroeconomic environment has accelerated it.

“When there is a declining business volume, people look to consolidate, look for efficiency, and also look to diversify their income stream,” Piskorski says, noting that, by buying Anywhere, Compass will gain its title and settlement services. “By bringing some additional auxiliary income streams under your hood, you can monetize more.”

The deal would give the combined company an enterprise value of about $10 billion. Compass will pay the equivalent of $13.01 for each share of Anywhere common stock, in an all-stock transaction set to close in the second half of 2026.

Compass shares closed 0.3% higher on Tuesday. The shares closed 15.7% lower on Monday, according to Dow Jones Market Data. Anywhere stock closed about 1.7% higher, following Monday’s 45.5% climb.

Write to Shaina Mishkin at shaina.mishkin@dowjones.com