So a number of you have messaged and written me to say positive things about the two interviews I did with Fred Bin of Zoom Casa and Rick Rudman of Curbio last week. I know I’m a writer first and you come here to read overly lengthy posts about various real estate topics, but I … Read more
Happy Friday afternoon, everybody. I normally wouldn’t write something today, but… I’ve been traveling and came down with a cold and have been wanting to write this for a couple of days. Plus, what the hell — maybe some of you will enjoy some light reading over the weekend. I just recorded a great conversation … Read more
I feel pretty certain that anybody that is reading Notorious likely already knows that the legislature of California has passed Assembly Bill 5 (AB5) that tries to rein in the so-called “gig economy” workers. The bill is headed to Gov. Newsom for signature, and it appears that he will indeed sign it, especially given statements … Read more
The battle between Realogy and Compass took a strange turn in recent days, when Compass claimed that they rejected a marriage offer from Realogy according to The Real Deal: With his back against the mats, Realogy CEO Ryan Schneider considered selling the brokerage to its chief rival: Compass. In a statement Friday, the SoftBank-backed brokerage … Read more
One of the more interesting things that happened last week was news that Keller Williams will roll out a new “concierge” program in California, Georgia and Texas. Designed to compete against similar offerings from Compass (note that KW says they pay no attention whatsoever to competitors, but I do think the lady doth protest too … Read more
From Inman News (Subscription Required) comes word of a new Redfin initiative whose time has come: Redfin believes that real estate consumers don’t really understand the way commissions work, and so as of Thursday the online brokerage and portal is doing something about it: Now, all Redfin-listed homes will publicly display the commission that sellers are offering … Read more
Brokerages and national franchises partnering with big money companies to offer iBuyer services appears to be all the rage these days. Realogy was first, partnering with Home Partners of America, for its cataLIST program. Redfin was next, partnering with Opendoor… while saying that they plan to compete head on against their partner in overlapping markets. … Read more
Realogy reported its Q2 results last week, and on balance, it was a very nice quarter. The highlights of the presentation are improved profitability, strong cash flows, paying down debt, and a narrative that the broken fundamentals at the NRT are changing. Or trending like it’s changing. Maybe it’s more of a looking like it’s … Read more
Happy Friday everybody. I realize most of you won’t get to this until tomorrow or perhaps Monday, but since I’ve been working on the Zillow Q2 earnings analysis (likely publishing on Monday), I wanted to end the week on a… well… interesting note. Most of you have seen the headlines on Inman about Zillow’s massive … Read more