Beware the strings attached to the monetary incentives Compass with attract you with; read the contract in full. The fine print is that you're responsible for paying back incentives (In total, not pro-rata) if you leave Compass within 2-years of the time the incentives hit your account, NOT at the expiration of your contract. This has led to many agents being faced with bills in the tens of thousands after leaving at the expiry of their contracts but not after the 2-year anniversary of the incentives hitting their bank accounts. Perhaps the most insidious of the incentives is the "Marketing Budget." The marketing budget expires after one year but has a 2-year clawback from when the money was spent. For example, Compass offers you a 15K budget that expires in 1 year on a two-year contract. You make it to 11 months and realize that you still have 7.5k left on the budget that you want to invest in some marketing plan rather than let the 7.5k expire and return to Compass. Well, you now are on the hook for that 7.5k until you have been at Compass for 2 years and 11 months, but Compass will renegotiate your commission split twice within that time period, once at 1 year and again at the end of the original 2-year term. This can lead to agents facing working for a lesser split or paying off the money owed from incentives in order to break free of Compass and move to another broker with a better commission split. It's not exactly a deal with the devil, but I would advise everyone to read the fine print carefully and if possible before signing on, negotiate a pro-rata repayment of all incentives upon disassociation instead of repayment in full.
