I realize I just posted on the future of the MLS, and normally, I’d let posts sit for a few days to “mature” but this is far too big an event and far too big a deal to wait. In case you missed it, a class action lawsuit was filed with the United States District … Read more
(Pardon me a moment while I go put on my asbestos suit for the inevitable flames coming my way.) The Zillow Group Q4/2018 earnings call yesterday was a shocker in many ways. What most people immediately focused on was the change at CEO from Spencer Rascoff to Rich Barton. I gather from social media this … Read more
Unless you have been living under a rock, you’ve seen the recent brouhaha over the video of a podcast Gary Vaynerchuk’s video where he completely shits on homeownership. In case you missed it, the first part is all about homeownership: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmUyYzrcmEA The real estate commentariat more or less exploded, partly because Gary Vee has long … Read more
So one of the bigger announcements in recent memory went out a few days ago, and… no one appears to be asking the obvious question about it. I am speaking of the announcement that CoreLogic will be the new vendor for UpstreamRE. Since I have good friends in both companies, I congratulate them both and … Read more
Q3 earnings are starting to come out, with Realogy, Zillow and RE/MAX reporting and Redfin and EXPI coming soon. I’m likely going to do a Red Dot on the important takeaways from Q3 (and there are a few, from what I can tell right now) but I typically don’t do RE/MAX in any sort of … Read more
I’ve been busy researching and writing the November Red Dot, which has now been published. But as often happens, when I’m deep in that project, blogging gets light. I apologize. It appears there are a few things to talk about, but none are more important or more interesting than two recent announcements by NAR and … Read more
There is a great interview with Robert Reffkin, CEO of Compass, up on Inman today. Read the whole thing. But I saw something that really made me sit back and think, so figured I’d share it with everybody. Here’s what Reffkin said: And the third is that agents are starting to operate their business on … Read more
Yesterday, an item on Facebook caught my eye. It was someone sharing a Medium post by Frances Flynn Thorsen, the “Blogmother” of real estate. Before you continue, I strongly suggest reading the whole thing. (You’ll need a Medium account, I believe.) There’s quite a lot of history here, including some sordid drama involving criminal extortion, … Read more
I’m deep into writing the October Red Dot, but Andrew Flachner of RealScout sent me a personal email this morning with his Open Letter to the industry attached. He’s spoken to me before about this initiative, and asked if I would write about it. Well, the Open Letter is now published, and Inman News has … Read more