Earlier today, the Massachusetts Supreme Court handed down its decision on Monell v. Boston Pads, one of two independent contractor status lawsuits that the real estate industry has been watching with baited breath. (The other one, still being litigated, is Bararsani v. Coldwell Banker in California.) Bottomline: the brokerages and the REALTOR Associations that backed … Read more
The talk within the industry these days is all about technology. Well, by “these days” I suppose I mean the last ten years or more. Sometimes I honestly wonder who talks about technology more: REALTORS or venture capitalists. Go look on any of the social media channels frequented by real estate folks, and all the … Read more
Over on Facebook, Sam Debord (regular readers are familiar with Sam) asked a really, really good question: Sam DeBord Rob, give us your take on AMP benefiting small MLSs. Does better software slow consolidation, or are other issues driving it? AMP, of course, stands for RPR’s Advanced Multi-List Platform, a project with which I’ve been … Read more
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1_9WYllhiQ Without question, the big topics coming out of NAR Midyear Legislative Meetings were about RPR-AMP, Upstream, and the future of the MLS. I’ve already written a few posts about them, and expect to write more in the future. But lost in all of that was a big rebrand and relaunch by Move of Realtor.com. … Read more
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZ0SR3pYJ7c Who am I, what have I become? Two stories hit my awareness overnight that confirm something I’ve been saying for a while. In 2013, I wrote this: The second possible unintended consequence is not regulatory, but practical. For a while, I’ve argued that the reason why the MLS has become so important was that … Read more
In a recent post on Realuoso, my friend Erica Ramus, wrote an Op/Ed on how Project Upstream will change everything: The Project Upstream broker initiative is an attempt to gather real estate data under one umbrella, again trying to wrestle back control of our listings and data. … Hahn’s description of “MLS Mashups” and the … Read more
This is not a post. This is an information dump. A reader sent me the materials that were provided to the Directors at the NAR Midyear Legislative Meetings that just concluded to support the proposal to fund RPR-AMP-Upstream. Thought many of you hadn’t seen these, so I wanted to upload them and make them available. … Read more
I have a feeling we’re going to be talking about a whole variety of things that went down at NAR Legislative Meetings & Trade Expo (aka, “Midyear”) this year for months and years to come. It’s been a great week, but rough on the sleep schedule, so these are not exactly deeply-thought-out opinions here. It’s … Read more
I’m still at the NAR Midyear Legislative Sessions and heading out to meetings soon, so this will be brief. By now, you know that NAR’s Finance and Executive Committees have approved RPR to become the platform for the hitherto-mysterious Project Upstream. Inman News has coverage of the decision. Thing is, this decision highlights precisely what … Read more