Israeli-Founded Real Estate Startup Compass Acquires San Francisco’s Paragon

July 10, 2018 | Compass, the New York property tech firm founded in 2012 by Israeli entrepreneur Ori Allon, has acquired Paragon Real Estate Group to form San Francisco’s largest residential brokerage firm, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Compass did not disclose financial details of the deal.

“With the addition of Paragon, Compass’ Bay Area team has grown to more than 500 agents representing more than $4.5 billion in sales volume last year. Compass is now the number one real estate company in San Francisco by sales volume and market share,” the company said in a statement.

Compass, which was also co-founded by Robert Reffkin, develops a digital real estate brokerage platform. The company is currently valued at over $2.2 billion after receiving an investment of $450 million in December 2017 from Japan-based Softbank, one of the world’s leading funds.  This brought its total funding to $775 million.

Compass has been reshaping the real estate market in the US with its algorithm-based platform that aims to better the home-buying process, pairing it with the expertise of top agents, which the company is said to be luring with significant signing bonuses, NoCamels reported in January.

Allon has said the company wants to pursue a global model, with goals of being the biggest real estate company in the world. “We realized that to hit the goal of where we want to be in the next two to three years — Compass everywhere, in every major city worldwide — we needed another partner, and that is the vision Softbank is aligned with,” Allon told TechCrunch in December.

Paragon was founded in 2004 in San Francisco. Compass has 40 offices across 13 US cities including New York, Chicago, Washington, Miami, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.