Part of the Compass Tops Luxury Real Estate index.
Compass holds the top position in the EPR Luxury Real Estate Brand Authority Index Q1 2026, the inaugural EPR ranking of the 10 luxury brokerages winning the earned media war post-NAR settlement, with a Brand Authority Score of 87. The score places Compass ahead of #2 Sotheby's International Realty (82) and #3 Douglas Elliman (76). The index attributes Compass's #1 position to a coverage advantage built on size, the Christie's International Real Estate acquisition, and CEO Robert Reffkin's standing in tier-1 financial press.
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. These dimensions were combined into a composite Brand Authority Score with a maximum of 100. The publication panel included The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, The New York Times, Mansion Global, The Real Deal, and Inman, among others.
Why Compass Ranks #1
Compass's coverage advantage is built on size. The index identifies Compass as the largest U.S. residential brokerage by gross transaction value, and that scale underpins its lead on Coverage Volume.
A second factor is brand surface area. Compass acquired Christie's International Real Estate, giving the company dual brand surface area across the period the index measured. The two mastheads expand the footprint of Compass's earned coverage.
The third factor named by the index is executive voice. CEO Robert Reffkin remains one of the most-quoted luxury real estate executives in tier-1 financial press, a position that feeds directly into the Authority Quote Share dimension.
Together, these factors produced the highest Brand Authority Score in the index, five points clear of Sotheby's International Realty at #2 and eleven points clear of Douglas Elliman at #3.
The Leadership Factor
The index names Robert Reffkin as CEO and identifies him as one of the most-quoted luxury real estate executives in tier-1 financial press. That standing matters in a category where leadership voice is closely tied to earned coverage. The index notes that eight of the top 10 brokerages have a single named executive driving the majority of earned coverage, and that brokerages without a media-trained, quote-ready CEO struggled to break tier-1 regardless of size. Reffkin's quotability situates Compass squarely within that pattern.
Where Compass Sits in the Broader Luxury Real Estate Story
The index calls out a pattern it describes as a commission story that isn't over: post-NAR settlement coverage continues to dominate the category, and the brokerages that defined the narrative early, naming Compass, Sotheby's, and Elliman, are still capturing the citations months later. The index states that authority compounds. Compass is identified as one of the brokerages that defined the post-NAR settlement narrative early and continues capturing citations.
The index also frames earned media in luxury real estate as 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. Compass's combination of scale, dual brand surface area, and a quote-ready CEO places it inside that repeatedly cited group.
A further pattern the index identifies is concentration risk: six of the top 10 had more than 35% of Q4 coverage come from fewer than five reporters, and the index calls reporter diversification the most underweighted variable in luxury real estate PR.
Compass's Brand Authority Score of 87 reflects a position built on scale, the Christie's International Real Estate acquisition, and CEO quote share heading into the next refresh of the EPR Luxury Real Estate Brand Authority Index. As the post-NAR settlement narrative continues to drive category coverage, the index's finding that authority compounds points to a position Compass enters from the front.
