Compass Real Estate CEO Robert Reffkin addresses attendees of the company’s retreat in Denver on June 3. In his keynote speech, he emphasized the need for real estate agents to be able to offer homesellers a choice in how they market their properties.
The co-founder of Denver-born real estate brand Milehimodern has taken his team to join the country’s largest residential real estate brokerage.
Peter Blank and his six-member team, the Peter Blank Collective, became part of New York City-based Compass Inc. (NYSE: COMP) in late May.
Making the jump to Compass was largely to align Blank’s team with CEO Robert Reffkin’s overall strategy for selling homes, Blank told the DBJ.
“I appreciate and support what Robert is doing, specifically that he is taking on some of the big boys in real estate to allow our clients choice — choice is the big word here — on how they want to market their properties,” he said.
Milehimodern first formed as a team co-founded by Blank and Carmelo Paglialunga under Kentwood Real Estate about 15 years ago, Blank said.
The group, specializing in modern architecture, later joined LIV Sotheby’s International Realty in 2015 before spinning off to be its own brokerage in 2019. Co-owners Paglialunga and Carla Thompson now lead Milehimodern.
Blank stepped out of leadership and ownership about five years ago to focus on his brokerage team, which handled approximately $100 million in sales volume in 2024, he said.
Milehimodern, as a whole, netted $1.96 billion in Denver-area sales volume that same year. Compass reported $5.61 billion, according to Denver Business Journal research.
Compass entered the Denver and Boulder market in 2019 and has grown to be the metro area’s top brokerage by sales volume. Its top team in Denver, the 60-plus-member Be One Team, reported $433.2 million in sales in 2024.
As CEO of Compass, Reffkin has been making waves in the real estate world with his argument that sellers should be able to market their homes however they want, without restrictions from what he calls “organized real estate,”or the National Association of Realtors, multiple listing services and home listing portals like Zillow.
A new NAR policy allows real estate agents to delay posting listings for a period of time to be decided by the local MLS before sending them to portals.
Last week, Reffkin joined more than 1,200 Compass agents and employees who converged on Denver for a three-day retreat, where they talked about Compass’ strategy. Reffkin took the stage June 3 to share his argument for the brokerage’s unique property marketing system, which includes what it calls Private Exclusives.
Launched in early May, these listings are not publicly available online, but are available to all Compass agents and others who visit a Compass office. As of June 3, there were 230 Compass Private Exclusives in the state of Colorado.
Reffkin sees this network of listings as the first step in the company’s three-tiered marketing system: listing a property as a Private Exclusive, publicly launching the property on Compass’ website and then finally sharing it on the MLS and portals. A property could sell at any stage, potentially limiting the number of homes that make it to listing services.
“Organized real estate benefits from controlling your inventory. If they don’t have your inventory, it puts their business model at risk,” Reffkin told the Compass gathering, according to a written copy of his prepared keynote speech.
It’s a familiar concept for Blank.
“In fact, that’s how the brand Milehimodern was started, [it] was kind of our own little, if you will, MLS system of creating really cool properties on our website that weren’t necessarily available to the MLS system,” Blank said, noting Reffkin’s company has taken the private listing fight and marketing strategy nationwide.
“I’m a small little voice, but his voice is big, and if anybody’s going to shake things up, it’s going to be Robert,” Blank said.