Short Friday Post: What If the Industry Yanked All Their Listings?

I recently found this post on GeekEstate, which was from a while ago, that asked a provocative question: There are some proponents for the entire industry ceasing syndication entirely (specifically to Zillow). The thinking is generally “with no listings, Zillow would become irrelevant and lose all their traffic, all that traffic would frequent agent/broker websites, and the result would be … Read more

On Project Upstream (Part 2): The Path Forward

In Part 1, we discussed why Project Upstream as currently setup is problematic, despite the goals of Upstream being absolutely worth pursuing. In this part, I go more into offering solutions. Had I been involved with Upstream earlier on, this would have been my advice, but then, nobody asked me. 🙂 Basically, my take is that … Read more

The Future of Real Estate, According to Zillow

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about Zillow’s acquisition of Dotloop, and offered the following under “The Long Game”: Over the long haul then, those who are working with Zillow, leveraging that end-to-end data, and managing the lead-to-contract-to-close lifecycle most efficiently will do more business, make more money, and drive competitors out of … Read more

On Project Upstream (Part 1): Great Concept, Problematic Execution

At the Inman Connect conference that just wrapped up, there was a “town hall” on a variety of topics featuring industry thought leaders like Marilyn Wilson of the WAV Group, Mark McLaughlin of Pacific Union, Joseph Rand of BHG Rand Realty, and Katie Maxwell of Intero. One question I asked was about Project Upstream, the recently … Read more

The Broker in the Internet Age

On the comments to my post about Zillow-Dotloop last week, this happened: My readers — the smartest, best informed readers in the real estate industry! I told Leslie that the answer was a post in and of itself, but as it happens, I’m heading out to California next week to talk about this precise topic … Read more

Zillow Acquires Dotloop – I Chat With Errol and Austin, and Have Initial Thoughts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGbScr_4G0Y Earlier today, Zillow announced it was acquiring dotLoop, the popular real estate transaction management platform company. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. The press release is here: Zillow Group (NASDAQ:Z), which houses a portfolio of the largest and most vibrant real estate and home-related brands on mobile and Web, today announced it has … Read more

How Many REALTORS Actually Support NAR’s Policies?

This is (hopefully) a brief post, inspired and triggered by something I saw on Facebook today. My friend Lisa Heindel, a broker in New Orleans, wrote up a post dealing with REALTOR.com’s partnership with AirBnB. It appears that a number of people in NOLA are not particularly happy with AirBnB, and Lisa isn’t too thrilled … Read more

How Many REALTORS Actually Support NAR's Policies?

This is (hopefully) a brief post, inspired and triggered by something I saw on Facebook today. My friend Lisa Heindel, a broker in New Orleans, wrote up a post dealing with REALTOR.com’s partnership with AirBnB. It appears that a number of people in NOLA are not particularly happy with AirBnB, and Lisa isn’t too thrilled … Read more

MLS Conversions and Zillow Hate

I’ve been engaged on a project that is both interesting and important for a large regional MLS the last couple of months. As part of that project, I’ve spoken to dozens of people — brokers, agents, Association leadership, MLS leadership, etc. — about a variety of topics, which has been, to quote Tony the Tiger, … Read more