Redfin giving agents options, not ‘corporate marching orders’
Rocket exec Joe Rath discusses the Compass deal, Redfin’s stance on transparency, Varun Krishna’s “great relationship” with Glenn Kelman and more.
The Redfin of today looks a bit different than the Redfin of early 2025 — prior to its acquisition by Rocket Companies — and not just because it has a shiny new logo.
In the nearly one year since that $1.75 billion deal closed, Redfin has seen the departure of longtime CEO Glenn Kelman, the influence of Rocket CEO Varun Krishna — who currently serves as Redfin's interim CEO — and a shift in its approach to pre-market listings.
But the companies are culturally aligned in ways that became apparent when Krishna first met with the Redfin team, according to Joe Rath, who became Rocket's head of industry relations last summer after working at Redfin for over a decade.
Krishna and Kelman "still have a great relationship" four months after the vocal industry advocate left his leadership role at the brokerage and search portal, Rath said on a recent Real Estate Insiders Unfiltered podcast, adding that Kelman left "on really great terms."
The biggest post-acquisition surprise for Rath has been "how seamless it's been so far," he said. "The thing that's so different now is just the scale of it."
What Redfin's partnership with Compass is all about: Rocket's February announcement that Compass "Coming Soon" and "Private Exclusive" listings would appear on Redfin came as a surprise to some within the industry given Kelman's earlier opposition to such listings.
The partnership, according to Rath, is simply "about getting inventory on Redfin.com." While Compass "Coming Soons" began appearing on the portal immediately, "Private Exclusives" have yet to roll out.
"Those listings are included in the agreement — we just haven't shipped anything yet," Rath explained, adding that their focus lately has been on the wider industry conversation about listing access.
No 'corporate marching orders': But Redfin's pre-marketing partnership with Compass and its new "Early Access" search category don't equate to "corporate marching orders," Rath said. He recalled meeting a top-performing Redfin agent who recently told him they would not necessarily advise a coming-soon approach based on the current market conditions — and that, Rath said, is fine.
"All we're saying is, we're unlocking more of these options for you in case the seller does want to choose this path for marketing. We're not saying this is a mandate from us."
An evolving philosophy on transparency? "Things definitely have shifted," Rath said when asked about the company's stance on transparency. But Redfin also launched "Redfin Exclusives" in a handful of markets under Kelman's watch, Rath noted, suggesting experimentation has occurred at the company before.
"If the industry heads a certain way, we have to do that in order to compete," he said.
Redfin under Krishna: Rocket's CEO has a "product-based mind," Rath observed, and he has "this idea that every home is for sale."
Krishna has challenged Redfin to consider not just the homeowners who are currently trying to sell, but also the homeowners who are interested in what would happen if and when they decided to list — and need to understand terms like coming-soons or private exclusives.
"I just love the idea of breaking down some of these definitions," Rath said. "Just saying what it actually is, which is this sort of gray area of this shadow inventory that exists — not because you're hiding anything, but because the seller doesn't actually know they're a seller yet."