From lawsuits to mergers and acquisitions at a scale never seen before in real estate and everything in between, 2025 was full of twists, turns and surprises for the housing industry. HousingWire is rewinding and breaking down the biggest storylines in the real estate industry from this past year.
While the talk around mergers and acquisitions for the first half of the year centered primarily around Rocket’s massive deals with Redfin and Mr. Cooper, one of the biggest M&A storylines of 2025 arrived at the tailend of Q3, when Compass announced its all-stock deal to acquire real estate conglomerate Anywhere.
The acquisition, which was announced in mid-September, gave Anywhere an enterprise value of approximately $10 billion and included the assumption of its debt.
When the transaction is complete, current Compass shareholders will own nearly 80% of the combined company stock, and Anywhere shareholders will own over 20%.
This landmark acquisition brings Compass together with some of the most well known brands in real estate, giving the company a total of over 340,000 agents worldwide.
While many in the real estate community lauded Compass CEO Robert Reffkin on the deal, others were concerned about what it might mean for Compass’s inventory of exclusive listings. However, as many in the real estate industry noted, while the deal does give Compass an impressive roster of agents under its umbrella, just 51,000 of Anywhere’s agents are part of the owned brokerage operation, bringing Compass’s owned brokerage agent total of a little over 90,000. And while Compass does have greater control over these agents than those at a franchise, the agents are still independent contractors so Compass does not have complete control over how they run their businesses.
Looking ahead to 2026, while much discussion will still be given to Compass’s exclusive inventory, before the industry can see how the Anywhere acquisition will impact this, the deal will first have to close. The two parties have said they expect the deal to close during the second half of 2026, but prior to closing the deal may be subject to antitrust scrutiny. M&A experts, like RTC Consulting co-founder Steve Murray, anticipate that federal or state authorities may compel Compass to divest some of its newly acquired assets in certain markets where it already has a strong presence such as New York City, Chicago and Southern and Northern California.
Despite these potential hurdles, Compass and Reffkin maintain that they are confident in their ability to get this deal to the closing table. According to Reffkin, this confidence comes from his firm’s experience integrating the @properties Christie’s International Real Estate operation it acquired in December 2024.
“While we recognize that the Anywhere transaction is clearly much bigger in size, we are confident that we can replicate the Christie’s International Real Estate playbook at Anywhere over time,” Reffkin said during his firm’s Q3 2025 earnings call in November.
HousingWire and the real estate industry will be watching how the experience with @properties Christie’s translates to Anywhere in 2026.
This is part one of a seven-part series.
