Part of the Compass Tops Luxury Real Estate index.
Brown Harris Stevens ranks #9 with a Brand Authority Score of 54 in the EPR Luxury Real Estate Brand Authority Index Q1 2026, an analysis of Q4 2025 earned media coverage across the top 10 U.S. luxury brokerages. The brokerage's position reflects two distinct strengths flagged by the index: CEO Bess Freedman's standing as the most-quoted female brokerage CEO in tier-1 luxury coverage, and the highest sentiment score in the top 10. Coldwell Banker Global Luxury sits one position above at #8 (58); Engel & Völkers anchors the list at #10 (49).
What the EPR Luxury Real Estate Brand Authority Index Measures
The index analyzed Q4 2025 earned media coverage across 12 tier-1 business, real estate, and luxury publications. Each brokerage was scored on four dimensions, Coverage Volume, Authority Quote Share, Sentiment Index, and Reporter Reach, combined into a composite Brand Authority Score on a 0, 100 scale. The 12-publication panel includes The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, The New York Times, Mansion Global, The Real Deal, and Inman, among others.
Why Brown Harris Stevens Ranks #9
Brown Harris Stevens's score of 54 is built on quality rather than raw coverage volume. The index singles out two facts about the brokerage's Q4 2025 earned media position.
First, Bess Freedman is the most-quoted female brokerage CEO in tier-1 luxury coverage. That distinction places Brown Harris Stevens inside the index's broader pattern that "the CEO is the brand": eight of the top 10 brokerages have a single named executive driving the majority of earned coverage, and brokerages without a media-trained, quote-ready CEO struggled to break tier-1 regardless of size. Freedman is the named executive carrying Brown Harris Stevens's voice in that environment.
Second, Brown Harris Stevens posted the highest sentiment score in the top 10. Sentiment Index is one of the four scoring dimensions in the index, and Brown Harris Stevens leads the field on it, a result that no other brokerage among the ten ranked, including #1 Compass (87) and #2 Sotheby's International Realty (82), can claim.
The composite score of 54 places Brown Harris Stevens four points below Coldwell Banker Global Luxury at #8 and five points above Engel & Völkers at #10.
The Bess Freedman Factor
The index identifies Freedman by name and title, CEO, and credits her with Brown Harris Stevens's standing in tier-1 quote share among female brokerage chiefs. That positioning maps onto the index's cross-brand observation that earned media in luxury real estate is a citation infrastructure problem: tier-1 reporters cite the same five to ten brokerages repeatedly because those brokerages have built the relationships, the data feeds, and the named-spokesperson reliability that beat journalism requires. Freedman is Brown Harris Stevens's anchor in that citation infrastructure.
Within Brown Harris Stevens's own media output, Freedman hosts The LEAD, a monthly interview series described on the brokerage's site as hosted by "visionary real estate leader and champion for social change, BHS CEO Bess Freedman." The series sits inside the brokerage's MORE (Mastery of Real Estate) podcast and video network.
Where Brown Harris Stevens Sits in the Broader Luxury Real Estate Story
The index identifies four cross-brand patterns shaping the Q4 2025 luxury real estate earned media landscape. Two are directly relevant to Brown Harris Stevens's #9 position.
The first is the CEO-as-brand pattern described above, in which Freedman's quote share is the kind of asset the index treats as load-bearing. The second is that the commission story isn't over: post-NAR settlement coverage continues to dominate the category, and the brokerages that defined the narrative early, Compass, Sotheby's, Elliman, are still capturing the citations months later. Brown Harris Stevens is not named among those early definers, and its #9 placement reflects that the narrative concentration has compounded for the brokerages that moved first.
A third pattern, concentration risk in reporter relationships, with six of the top 10 having more than 35% of Q4 coverage come from fewer than five reporters, is flagged by the index as the most underweighted variable in luxury real estate PR. The index does not specify whether Brown Harris Stevens is among that six.
What the Score Signals Going Forward
Brown Harris Stevens enters the next refresh of the EPR Luxury Real Estate Brand Authority Index with two named assets the index has already validated: the top sentiment score among the ten ranked brokerages and the most-quoted female CEO in tier-1 luxury coverage. Both are durable inputs into the four-dimension composite, and both are tied to a single named spokesperson the index has identified by role.
