Compass Goes “Disco Chic” for San Francisco Holiday Party

Compass boogied into the holiday season with a “disco chic” San Francisco holiday party. The city’s biggest residential brokerage celebrated a year that seemed to move in fits and starts based on macroeconomic trends and the election, but was ultimately an improvement on 2023’s slower market.

Last year, Compass held two different parties in San Francisco: one in its Bay Street office in Ghirardelli Square and one in its Van Ness branch in Nob Hill. This year, the brokerage brought agents and staff — but no plus ones, according to the invite — together for one big dance party at Rick and Roxy’s, with an open bar and a catered buffet of kebabs, crostinis and baklava by La Mediterranee.

Given the ‘70s vibe of the Marina bar — which has a vintage rec room look with a faux stone wall and wood siding on one half and a clubbier feel with a mirrored DJ booth and go-go cages on the other — the dress code for the evening was “Studio 54 meets 2024.” Agents took the opportunity to break out their glittery attire as they met, mingled and took to the lit-up dance floor.

Retro wardrobe

Sam Buckwalter, an agent out of the 16th Street office in the Castro, said he chose his sequined jacket out of the “buckets and buckets of costumes” he owns, and that the night out at the bar was more his style than the “less fabulous” in-office holiday parties of the past. He said decided to balance out the flashy top with some more subdued slacks, since it was a work event, while agents Andreas Ernst out of the Van Ness office and Jason Todd out of the 16th Street office both took the opportunity to wear sparkles from head to toe, since they already had the outfits from previous themed parties, they said.

“This is from a friend’s crystal extravaganza holiday party in Palm Springs,” said Todd, who is a Compass agent as well as a development manager for multifamily developer Workbench in Oakland.

While some agents shopped their closets, Damon Knox, an agent out of the Van Ness office, said he ended up buying his red sequined blazer on Amazon specifically for the party, after he asked Chat GPT to find him an outfit that would make him look like “a disco ball.” It was his first Compass holiday party, having come over this summer from a sales manager post at Coldwell Banker.

Knox served as president of the San Francisco Association of Realtors in 2023 and will sit on the California Association of Realtors Executive Committee in 2025. Though he lives in Petaluma, Knox said the morning after the holiday party he would be back in the city at 8 a.m. for SFAR’s annual Welcome Home Project holiday fundraiser, which raises money and brings in donations to help families with housewares as they transition out of homelessness.

Knox said he left his long-time role at Coldwell because parent company Anywhere’s settlement on buyer commissions precludes managers from sitting on boards. He said he felt “more energy” and had better access to off-market inventory at Compass, which he called the “800-pound gorilla in the room.”

Oliver Sloane, an agent in San Francisco and Marin County with Compass’ Hood Farrell Group, said he did not dress for the party theme because he had to meet his wife later at her holiday party and felt sequins would be the wrong look for her financial service firm’s event. The party marked his first anniversary at Compass, and as a real estate agent. Thus far, he has only represented buyers, who he said seemed to be looking for homes only “hypothetically” this year, but he was optimistic for 2025.

“My spidey senses are telling me we’re over the hump,” he explained.

“Holiday cheer”

Also looking ahead was Neal Ward, one of Compass’ biggest San Francisco agents and one of the highest-performing agents in the city this year. He said luxury buyers were distracted by the election and then the holiday season, but he predicted a stronger spring than 2024, which he hoped would be buoyed by new luxury listings.

“There was not one new listing in Presidio Heights between September 1 and the end of October,” he said.

He said comparing last year’s potluck party at the Bay Street office with this year’s dance party was “apples and oranges.” Last year, it felt good to fill the office again after it emptied out during COVID, he said, but this year he appreciated the unified front of one big event.

Either way, as a founding member of Compass in San Francisco back in 2016, attending the party was important “to let new agents know that I care” and to spend time together doing something fun and not just “work, work, work.”

Ward recalled that, pre-pandemic, Compass held its holiday party at the Julia Morgan Ballroom, but this year the San Francisco party was one of the “more extravagant” in the Bay Area, according to Kevin Patsel, Compass’ regional vice president. He added that the San Francisco offices had pooled their funds to do something “different, festive and fun.”

Patsel called holiday parties “an expected part of an agents’ real estate experience,” which this year in Northern California Compass branches could mean anything from small sit-down luncheons to the flamboyant disco event. No matter the set up, the goal for agents is the same, he said.

“Mostly they just want to gather with peers, have some holiday cheer and close out the year on a positive social note,” he said.