Corcoran CEO Pam Liebman knows all the rumors.
She’s in Florida too much. She’s cutting costs. She hates Compass. No, actually, she’s shilling for Compass. Corcoran is going to become Compass.
Liebman is eager to start mythbusting. “I don’t like other people to tell my story — to tell Corcoran’s story,” she said.
At first glance, the Florida claims seem to hold some weight, considering she claims residency there and doesn’t have an office at Corcoran’s headquarters at 590 Madison Avenue. Instead, she sat down with The Real Deal last month, fresh off a recruiting lunch with an unnamed agent, taking questions in a generically dubbed “Corner Office.”
But Liebman, dressed casually in her trademark leather outerwear — in this case, a black vest, over a black long-sleeve shirt — whips out her phone and starts reading the texts that have rolled in over the last hour.
“Steve Gold texted me, Carrie Chiang texted me, [Deborah] Kern texted me, and Jessica Buchman and Ryan Kaplan,” she said, listing a Murderer’s Row of Corcoran’s top agents. “Okay, but I’m not involved.”
“I guarantee you, other people’s phones do not look like that,” she added.
For much of her tenure leading Corcoran, the brokerage has held pole position among New York City firms jostling for deals in its uber-competitive residential market. But Liebman hasn’t lost her sense of competition. (She claimed a recent rumor about Corcoran’s offices closing came from “their dumpy offices,” pointing out the window to Douglas Elliman’s headquarters.)
She’s been at the forefront of the fights that have defined Manhattan’s changing brokerage scene over the last decade-plus. After a techy disruptor called Compass shook up the city’s residential leaderboard in 2012, Liebman faced off with the firm and its combative young CEO, Robert Reffkin, after its poaching of top agents from legacy brokerages like Corcoran.
Now, Compass is on the disruption path yet again. Following a massive deal to acquire Corcoran and other name-brand brokerages in January, Reffkin has set his sights on breaking the industry away from platforms like Zillow and the Multiple Listing Service infrastructure behind it.
Reffkin’s moves have also spelled a transformation for Liebman, from leading one of New York City’s top brokerages for decades to playing a supporting role in Reffkin’s grand vision for residential real estate. For those in her orbit, it can be hard to picture.
“No one’s going to make her say something that she doesn’t believe in or act in a certain way,” said Corcoran COO Gary Malin. “She’s not going to change that.”
Deal going down
Liebman joined Corcoran in 1984 as a fresh-faced agent at what was then an upstart firm led by Barbara Corcoran, decades before her “Shark Tank” fame. Liebman, not Corcoran, was famously the point person for the sale of the company to NRT in 2001, pushing the deal across the finish line from the top of a Ferris wheel at an amusement park in California.
In Corcoran’s second go-around being sold, she didn’t find out until the night before the deal with Compass was announced.
“My phone kept ringing, and I was ignoring it because I was getting a massage,” she said. “Finally, I looked at my phone, and it was [Anywhere CEO] Ryan Schneider. He said, ‘I really need to talk to you.’”
She quickly assembled her Corcoran team for a late-night Zoom. “They all wanted to know, what did I think? Am I solid with this?” she said. “I said, ‘Let’s see what happens — let’s go for it. ‘”
That gung-ho attitude likely came as a surprise to those who have worked alongside or opposite Liebman, given her past tete-a-tetes with Compass, which arrived in New York in 2012 and proceeded to poach a number of top agents from long-time firms with lucrative incentive packages, including 51 Corcoran agents over the course of a year.
Corcoran sued Compass in 2015, accusing it of “brazenly and intentionally” raiding key Corcoran offices and using “unlawful methods” to recruit agents and managers. It also published the job offer and salary details of a manager that left for Compass and the highly guarded commission splits of defecting agents. Compass responded with counterclaims calling Corcoran’s action “malicious and retaliatory.”
“No one’s going to make her say something that she doesn’t believe in or act in a certain way. She’s not going to change that.”
Although the suit eventually settled later that year, Liebman remained irked. In a 2016 interview, she said the lawsuits came about because Corcoran would not “sit idly by when we’re wronged.”
Sources later told TRD that Corcoran had sought arbitration through the Real Estate Board of New York on multiple occasions over Compass allegedly stealing its listings.
Over a decade later, Compass has gone from recruiting from their competitors to buying them, capping off a wild ride that has seen it go from an unruly upstart to the largest brokerage in the country after its blockbuster $1.6 billion deal for Anywhere Real Estate brought brands like Coldwell Banker, Century 21, Sotheby’s International Realty and Corcoran under the newly-created Compass International Holdings.
In the process, it brought together Liebman and Reffkin, who appeared to be natural enemies for a decade. Now, they talk nearly every day.
“He’s been super cool,” she said of Reffkin. “So, if anyone ever wants to frame it that there’s any tension or anything, it doesn’t exist.”
Liebman and Reffkin first broke bread on Jan. 8, the day before the deal closed, at Le Bilboquet, a power lunch spot on East 60th Street, where they “were laughing at each other because our history was interesting,” Liebman said.
“Yes, there’s the shock factor,” said Malin. “We were very much in competition with them for quite some period of time.”
The two make for somewhat of an odd couple. Reffkin, rarely seen without a suit, is all strapping, blue-chip polish, with a pedigree that includes Columbia Business School and McKinsey. Although he has a reputation as a bit of a pugilist, most of his public statements have a PR-approved sheen to them.
Liebman, who is known for eschewing classic professional wear for leather jackets and jeans, voices her thoughts on the industry in a way that seems far more off the cuff, with an accent that hints at her native Staten Island.
But before Reffkin was the industry’s disruptor du jour, Liebman was seen as the new kid crashing the party. She and Corcoran defied the buttoned-up ladies-who-lunch crowd that tightly guarded co-op listings in the 1980s, eventually becoming one of the first brokerages to launch a website, publish market reports and market new developments. “We were always trailblazers,” Liebman said. “So now, being aligned and being part of another trailblazer, it’s a natural evolution.”
Former Douglas Elliman executive Scott Durkin, who returned to Corcoran as an agent last year, was still amazed at the apparent union.
“Did any of us think that it would be this close? No,” he said. “But I think it’s kind of magic.”
New team, same Pam
The integration has not been all sunshine and rainbows.
During an interview at the 92nd Street Y shortly after the deal closed, Liebman appeared critical of Compass “trying to make decisions before they really dig in.”
Noble Black, who returned to Corcoran from Elliman just weeks before the deal was announced, said Liebman was honest about her initial hesitations. “I don’t think going into it was anything she was eager to do,” he said. “I think there was just a lot of uncertainty about what was going to happen.”
Shortly after the merger, Compass instituted a five-day in-office policy, which some at Corcoran have chafed at, sources said. The firm was already operating in tight quarters after Corcoran Sunshine, the firm’s powerhouse new development division, closed its offices at 888 Seventh Avenue in 2024 to join the rest of the group at 590 Madison.
Liebman said any growing pains came partially as a result of the deal’s speedy closing, months earlier than expected after Compass employed a specialist lawyer to dodge a recommended antitrust review period. (Compass is now being sued by former Anywhere shareholders for allegedly misrepresenting its efforts at evading antitrust scrutiny.)
Her executive team, including Malin and chief marketing officer Christina Panos, has remained intact. Little has changed for agents beyond beginning to use Compass’ Home platform, according to Black.
Meanwhile, Liebman has taken up Reffkin’s quest for a post-Zillow world with gusto. In an internal meeting with Corcoran’s New York agents, Liebman urged them to pull their listings off of StreetEasy, the Zillow-owned platform that serves as New York’s de facto MLS. “If we win this battle, we win the war,” she said in comments echoing those that Reffkin has made over the last several years. “If we lose this battle, we will be at the mercy of this portal for now and forever.”
Outsiders have speculated that Liebman has simply become the latest victim of the Compass cult. Less than a year before the Compass acquisition, Liebman called claims that off-market listings sell for more “garbage.” Asked about that comment, Liebman said she “doesn’t know” if those claims are true or not, and instead invoked the need for “seller choice,” a constant Reffkin talking point.
Still, Liebman insisted she had not fallen under Reffkin’s spell. “I didn’t drink the Kool-Aid,” she said of her suddenly loud voice in the listings fight. “This has been my Kool-Aid since 2000. [Reffkin] drank my Kool-Aid.”
Liebman, who was also part of a group of major brokerages that tried to form an MLS in 2000, said she was embarrassed by Realogy signing a deal with StreetEasy in 2017, effectively ending a brokerage boycott of the platform and ushering in its dominant place in the city. Liebman had previously lambasted StreetEasy and cut agent reimbursements for its lead generation service.
“The new team is allowing me to be a lot more forceful in my opinions,” she said, comparing Compass to Anywhere. “The old team, it wasn’t that they said ‘Don’t say anything,’ but they were very conservative.”
“They took the muzzle [off] my mouth,” she said of working for Compass.
What’s in a brand?
The looming question hanging over the current public kumbaya sessions is what happens in the long run to Corcoran’s legacy — and viability.
Competing brokerage heads have said the deal has made it easier to recruit agents from the firms under the CIH umbrella, including Corcoran. “What’s the point of leaving Compass for Corcoran or Sotheby’s if they are all the same,” Brown Harris Stevens CEO Bess Freedman previously told TRD. “You can market it any way you want, but all of these brands will share the same tech and back end and ultimately answer to the same shareholders.”
Critics have cheered on the notion of brand dilution. Freedman has taken to using the unpleasant portmanteau “Corcass” on Instagram when referring to the two firms, while Douglas Elliman CEO Michael Liebowitz has been referencing Elliman’s singular brand as much as possible in public statements.
When asked if she feels “a little” protective of the Corcoran brand, Liebman was quick to correct.
“This is my baby,” she said. “I’ve been here longer than Barbara Corcoran, so I feel a lot protective over the brand.”
But Serhant’s Peter Zaitzeff, who spent six years at Corcoran before leaving in 2023, said he hasn’t seen a meaningful change. “Pam is the Corcoran brand,” he said. “From what I see on the outside, the Corcoran brand is still there.”
Beyond the tech integration, the firms have slowed down the competition in other ways. They no longer actively recruit each other’s agents. Corcoran Sunshine, the perennial top new development marketing operation in the city, has also partnered with the less-accomplished Compass Development Marketing on projects outside the city, and even one in New York, Liebman said.
“Where it’s beneficial to the agents and beneficial to the two companies, we’re open to anything,” she said of working across borders.
Still, Liebman is not giving up her old allegiances that quickly.
“People are at Corcoran because they’re at Corcoran and people are at Compass because they like Compass,” she said.
