The Silence of Our Friends: NAR CEO Edition

  My last post on Bob Goldberg being selected as the next CEO of NAR has sparked quite a response. Most of the private messages — even from those in top leadership positions at local, state and national levels — are of the “Boy, you hit that one out of the park!” variety. Most of … Read more

The Bob Goldberg Era Begins; Convince Me On A Few Things [LONG]

In the middle of the afternoon on Friday, June 23rd — a curious time to be releasing such major news — NAR announced that it had chosen NAR Senior VP Bob Goldberg to be the next CEO, replacing the retiring Dale Stinton. As you can imagine, I’ve had more than a few emails, text messages, … Read more

Random Musings: FSBO and the MLS, NAR Mandates Syndication, and Googlicious Horror

I’m packing for a two-day road trip, after which I will be in the mountains of North Carolina as opposed to the swamps of Houston for a couple of weeks. But I wanted to share a couple of random semi-amusing thoughts I’ve had in the last couple of days. Maybe you’ll find them amusing as … Read more

Pivot? Or Reveal? Upstream Decides to Go Downstream

A few of you have already asked for my opinions on The Pivot, as it is now being called. At the NAR Midyear meetings that took place last week, Upstream’s CEO Alex Lange told the attendees at CMLS Brings It to the Table event that going forward, Upstream will take a data feed from the … Read more

Understanding Opendoor’s Mortgage Brokerage Move

Regular readers know that I have said that Opendoor could be the most important company in real estate. My reasoning was that Opendoor looked to be trying to revolutionize the single biggest painful aspect of buying a home: the mortgage. Here’s what I wrote: So yeah, I think Opendoor is about revolutionizing the entire culture around how homes … Read more

Understanding Opendoor’s Mortgage Brokerage Move

Regular readers know that I have said that Opendoor could be the most important company in real estate. My reasoning was that Opendoor looked to be trying to revolutionize the single biggest painful aspect of buying a home: the mortgage. Here’s what I wrote: So yeah, I think Opendoor is about revolutionizing the entire culture around how homes … Read more

The New NAR CEO Job Description and Good to Great

NAR CEO Position Description by Robert Hahn on Scribd As many of you know, I’ve already taken some public positions on the whole new NAR CEO thing. Even going back to 2015, I predicted that NAR would select a female CEO in 2016… not realizing that the search committee won’t even be formed until November. … Read more

A Few Random Thoughts on BPP/Homesnap

Over at Inman, Leslie Ebersole has 6 questions about the new Broker Public Portal/Homesnap alliance. Read the whole thing, because it’s a solid reflection of the kinds of questions people have about BPP. The article got me thinking a bit about the BPP/Homesnap thing, and well, I have a few random thoughts about it. This … Read more

The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations: The Inman Person of the Year Edition

Blogging, social media, and work activities have been at an all time low. Big part of the reason is that the above is my view right now, except that you can’t see the turquoise waters of the Caribbean glistening like a carpet of gems…. So yeah, getting on the ye olde laptop is not real … Read more