Rapid Response: Why real estate matters more than ever, with Compass founder & CEO Robert Reffkin
Masters of Scale
WaitWhat
4.6 • 4.4K Ratings
🗓️ 20 May 2021
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
"We may not be able to survive this," remarked Robert Reffkin, founder and CEO of real estate platform Compass, after pandemic lockdown rules essentially outlawed U.S. home selling. Yet today the housing market is booming, and Compass has successfully IPO'ed. Reffkin shares how he kept his team together, why he stayed optimistic, and what businesses lucky enough to have benefited from Covid times owe their communities. He also shares insights on housing prices – after correctly predicting last year that summer 2020 would be the most successful in the history of the real estate market – and on the future of big cities. It’s a house tour worth taking.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | There was a moment where I looked to my wife and I said, |
| 0:04.0 | I think this could be it. |
| 0:06.0 | We may not be able to survive this. |
| 0:09.0 | I quickly realized that the goal was no longer to thrive. |
| 0:16.0 | The goal was just to survive. |
| 0:18.0 | I made the statement publicly that this is going to be the biggest summer in the history of real estate. |
| 0:23.0 | And I'm happy to say we were right. |
| 0:26.0 | The goal of Compass is to improve the real estate transaction for all stakeholders. |
| 0:32.0 | The agent, the buyer, and the seller. |
| 0:36.0 | And the pathway to doing that is by supporting agents. |
| 0:40.0 | Agents are an industry of two million entrepreneurs. |
| 0:44.0 | It's the largest industry dominated by women in the country. |
| 0:48.0 | One of the first industries at scale that let the LGBTQ plus community thrive. |
| 0:53.0 | How do we power entrepreneurship? |
| 0:56.0 | How do we empower people to realize their dreams and their goals to create a better life? |
| 1:03.0 | That's Robert Reffkin, co-founder and CEO of real estate platform Compass. |
| 1:08.0 | He's had quite a ride over the past year from a housing market that stopped cold when COVID hit |
| 1:14.0 | to a boom that's vaulted Compass to a successful IPO. |
| 1:18.0 | I'm Bob Safian, former editor of FESC, founder of the flux group and host of Master's of Scale Rapid Response. |
| 1:25.0 | I wanted to talk with Robert because how we view real estate dramatically shifted during the pandemic. |
| 1:30.0 | As urban locations came under new pressure and a remote work world fueled relocations everywhere. |
| 1:36.0 | Robert's insights on housing prices in the future of big cities provides an insider's perspective useful to all of us. |
... |
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