Compass Brief is a weekly business briefing for small business owners: real estate pros, accountants, practice managers, restaurants, contractors and consultants. For real estate, it reads housing and commercial real estate news, new HUD rules and the bills moving in your state and in Congress, then writes a short brief about what changed, why it matters to your business and what to do about it.
Rates move and buyers change their plans. Inventory builds in one neighborhood and dries up in the next. A city rewrites its short-term rental rules, the legislature changes property tax or landlord and tenant law, the licensing board changes what it asks of you. Each of these reaches your clients, often before you've had time to read about it.
Keeping up means checking trade news, agency notices and the legislature every week, between showings and closings. Compass Brief does that reading and tells you what matters for your work.
Compass Brief reads the feeds you choose. Its catalog of real estate sources includes:
And for commercial work:
Choose Real estate as a focus area and your account starts with five of these, including the HUD feed. You can add the others, or any publication's own feed, in Settings. With your city in your profile, Compass Brief also looks for local news outlets and city government feeds there.
The Laws tab suggests bills for your work. For real estate, it searches your state and Congress for bills on:
Your state comes from the location in your profile. Bills that have ended, or haven't moved in a year, are left out. You can also search for any bill by topic or number and track up to 30. When a tracked bill changes status, you get an alert with a plain-language summary of the change.
Bill data comes from LegiScan. Summaries are written by Claude (AI) and may contain mistakes.
Example, written for this page. Not about a real market or a real bill.
Mortgage rates eased this week, and the brokerage news you follow reports more first-time buyers asking about pre-approval. In your state, a bill on landlord and tenant notices passed its first committee: it would change how much notice is needed before a lease ends. HUD has proposed an update to a fair housing rule, open for public comment.
7-day free trial. No card needed. Then a founder price of $7/month or $77/year for our first 50 subscribers, locked in while you stay subscribed.
Put your city and state in your profile and choose Real estate as a focus area. The Laws tab then suggests bills on real estate, property tax, and landlord and tenant law in your state and in Congress. Track the ones that matter, and Compass Brief alerts you when one moves, with a plain-language summary of the change.
The feeds you choose. A real estate account starts with five from the catalog above, including the Federal Register's HUD feed, and you can add others in Settings. Paywalled articles are left out, since you couldn't open them.
One brief a week. In between, an alert arrives only when something can't wait, such as a big story on a topic you watch or a bill you track changing status. You can turn the emails off and read everything in the app.
Yes. The catalog has commercial sources (Bisnow, Commercial Observer and Connect CRE) next to residential ones, and your projects and focus areas, such as property management or development, shape what each brief covers.
A 7-day free trial with no card. Then a founder price of $7/month or $77/year for our first 50 subscribers, locked in for as long as you stay subscribed. Cancel anytime.