Rob Hahn 
Boy, some things are happening this week. Last night, I saw that NAR had filed its response in the form of a motion to dismiss the Moehrl v. NAR case. That was entirely expected, and now that I have a copy of the filing (Thanks Jay Thompson!) I can look at what the theory of … Read more
It seems pretty obvious now that the rest of the industry is waking up to the fact that iBuyer is not a blip on the radar, is not We Buy Ugly Houses with websites, and is something new altogether. The picture above and the quote from Glenn Kelman of Redfin at the recent T3 Summit … Read more
I don’t often talk about RE/MAX, because it’s not a brokerage. It’s a franchisor, with a business model that doesn’t tell us a whole lot about what’s going on with fundamentals of brokerage. But it is a public company, which reports numbers, and discusses what management thinks about things. From time to time, I do … Read more
“All of us are smarter than any one of us.” – Jim Zemlin, LINUX Foundation Remember this day: May 14, 2019. This is the day when BoxMLS announced OpenBoxMLS, the first real open source software initiative in real estate. I don’t want to embed the entire email, but for real estate technology geeks, these two … Read more
I just spent an hour glued to the TV, absolutely fascinated by what I was seeing and hearing. And no, it wasn’t the latest episode of Game of Thrones (which was rather disappointing in many ways… but I digress). I watched something normal human beings likely would not, since there are only 162 views on YouTube … Read more
Zillow reported its Q1/2019 earnings yesterday, and it was the first “real” earnings call with Rich Barton at the helm. As much as I missed hearing Spencer Rascoff on the call, I have to tip my hat to Barton and team (his style appears to be having the senior operators on the earnings call) for … Read more
Redfin reported its Q1/2019 results earlier today… and it’s like one of those Russian nesting dolls, except it’s a bit of a mystery inside an enigma within a puzzle kind of a deal. For the first time in… well… ever as far as Redfin is concerned, I find myself not quite able to understand what … Read more
A couple of weeks ago, NAR’s Second Century Ventures announced the 2019 class of companies in its REACH program. What is REACH? Here’s the official description: “The REACH® accelerator focuses on providing early- to mid-stage companies with access to NAR’s industry expertise, influence and key relationships as businesses launch into the trillion-dollar real estate space.” … Read more
In Part 1, I looked at the economics of iBuyers generally, and concluded that we need to analyze them as market makers, using market maker economic models, rather than as investors or brokerage companies. In this part 2, I wanted to get a bit more detailed and granular, using some data I was fortunate enough … Read more