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Compass Luxury Summit 2025: A New Blueprint for Luxury, Leadership, and the Modern Agent
Jon Granston | December 8, 2025
Jon Granston | December 8, 2025
By Jon Granston, Advisory
There are conferences that inspire, and then there are those that recalibrate you. This year’s Compass Luxury Summit at the Ritz-Carlton Bacara in Santa Barbara fell firmly into the latter category. It wasn’t the size of the event but the intentionality behind it—the intimacy that allowed real conversations, the honesty from the speakers, and the space it created to think critically about where luxury real estate is heading and what it demands of us as professionals.
The Summit felt like a masterclass not just in market strategy, but in personal clarity, brand responsibility, and long-term business architecture. Everyone will likely have different takeaways...We've put together a recap of the event content from our lens.
One of the key themes discussed by Mark McLaughlin, Compass’s Chief Real Estate Strategist, centered on AI. His message was simple: everyone is new to this rapidly evolving landscape, so “Just Start It.” He emphasized that agents won’t be replaced by AI—but agents who don’t use AI will be replaced by those who do.
Below is a graph illustrating how AI use cases have transformed in just the past year.
One of the most resonant sessions of the event was “Defining Luxury: Beyond the Brand,” led by Parker Beatty with David Kramer, Ari Afshar, and Luke Ebbin. Though each approaches the business differently, their shared message was unmistakable: momentum is the most underutilized engine in luxury real estate.
A major sale, a cluster of listings in one neighborhood, a timely PR moment—these are not isolated wins. They are opportunities to multiply visibility, deepen trust, and create new conversations. As David Kramer put it, the best agents don’t let momentum fade; they stretch it.
Ari Afshar added something more philosophical but deeply practical: luxury begins with authenticity. His analogy comparing agents to musicians brought the idea to life. Every agent plays a different melody. Some clients resonate with it, others don’t—and trying to appeal to everyone is the quickest path to mediocrity. In the luxury space, clarity is far more powerful than broad appeal.
Luxury, as the panel defined it, is ultimately about choice. The choices we make in how we present ourselves, how we communicate, how we curate experiences, and how we respond to moments of opportunity.
This theme echoed earlier in the “Power Women in Real Estate” panel with Tracy Tutor and Tessa Hilton, moderated by Nick Belardo. The discussion centered on visibility—not as self-promotion, but as a service. Clients cannot recognize your value if they never see it. Presence builds memory, and memory drives trust.
This challenged me to think about the personal pillars that define who I am and how our team at Advisory shows up. For me, those pillars are personal growth and spirituality, family, travel, and golf. They are not marketing themes; they are the foundation of how I move through the world. Sharing them authentically allows clients to understand not just what I do, but who I am. And in luxury, identity is part of the offering.
In the “Building and Owning Your Brand” panel, Felipe Hernandez led a discussion with F. Ron Smith, Janelle File, Brandon Goethals, and Brett Dickinson that emphasized one of the most important business truths for agents:
You cannot scale chaos.
In an industry with so much noise, the agents who win long-term are the ones who organize their business with the discipline of a CEO. The panel reinforced the importance of systems—structured communication, consistent marketing, a maintained CRM, regular outreach, clearly allocated budgets, and a deep understanding of what you deliver better than anyone else.
Brand is not a color palette or a logo—it is a promise. And that promise is upheld through structure.
Keynote speaker Nitin Motwani expanded the idea of brand equity from the agent level to the development level. His discussion of the Four Seasons Residences in Telluride—the first major development there in 15 years—highlighted how trusted names move markets.
Buyers in the luxury segment don’t just buy amenities; they buy certainty. They buy reputation. They buy track record. A respected brand creates immediate demand before a property even breaks ground.
The takeaway was clear: the value of our name is something we build deliberately, through every interaction, every system, and every outcome.
One of the Summit’s most valuable conversations came from Compass Chief Economist Mike Simonsen, who broke down market trends with refreshing clarity. His message was nuanced: transaction volume may rise into 2026, prices may soften, and days on market may stretch. Migration patterns have slowed dramatically—what he referred to as “The Great Stay”—and lending continues to influence market velocity.
His most important point: demand moves faster than supply. When positive rate news hits, buyers rush in before inventory has time to adjust, which means waiting for perfection often costs more than acting with perspective.
This reinforced the role of agents not as salespeople, but as interpreters—professionals who can take alarming headlines and translate them into facts rather than fear.
Compass Head of Coaching Ashley Donat delivered one of the most resonant frameworks of the Summit: “Forget about the goal. What is the system?” Goals matter, but systems produce them. Systems create repeatable excellence. Systems reduce stress, increase consistency, and allow us to deliver a calmer, more curated experience to clients.
This reinforced a series of questions Advisory is prioritizing:
How are we structuring our CRM and outreach to serve our existing network before expanding to new audiences?
What routines guide our marketing and digital footprint?
How do we continually learn—AI, market intelligence—to elevate the value we offer?
What are the daily habits that move the business forward?
Luxury is a discipline. Systems are the infrastructure of that discipline.
Throughout the Summit, one theme appeared repeatedly without needing its own panel: the way we show up is part of our brand. Everything clients see—our communication, our appearance, our social media, our newsletters, our energy, our follow-up—tells a story.
Your digital footprint has become an extension of your reputation. Increasingly, clients are discovering agents through Google, Zillow, and even AI-generated results. This makes online presence not a marketing accessory, but a foundational part of your brand credibility.
For Advisory, this means being deliberate about the content we share, the value we offer, and the consistency with which we show up. It's about reinforcing expertise in tax strategy, market interpretation, luxury lifestyle insights, and the personal experiences that connect us to our audience—travel, golf, family, and growth.
If there was a single sentence that captured the heart of the Summit, it came from a simple but profound idea:
Luxury is choice.
The choice to operate with intention.
The choice to build systems rather than chase chaos.
The choice to be authentic rather than performative.
The choice to be visible rather than silent.
The choice to learn, adapt, and evolve.
The choice to elevate the experience rather than simply facilitate the transaction.
This year’s Summit offered more than insights—it offered alignment. And as our team at Advisory continues to grow, these principles will shape how we serve, how we show up, and how we build a business rooted in clarity, discipline, and genuine luxury.
