Whatever do you suppose this is? Zillow is a living, growing database of all homes — not just homes for sale (we currently have data on more than 80 million homes). More than 1.3 million owners have claimed their homes on Zillow and many have updated their home facts. Kudos to Zillow for opening up … Read more
I’ve been thinking a bit about the whole MLS 5.0 issue ever since Saul Klein’s post appeared. The reactions have been interesting. Greg Swann of BHB was somewhat cool to the idea, as evidenced by the title of his blogpost: The “MLS 5.0″ Manifesto: Everyone working in hi-tech real estate must oppose this vicious plan … Read more
The NAR-DOJ settlement is the gift that keeps on giving. To a blogger at least. Well, to a blogger that happens to be interested in such an obscure and unimportant topic. 🙂 The latest piece of information is throwing me from confusion directly into bizarro-land. NAR released a “Special Report” in which it announced that … Read more
The NAR-DOJ Settlement is news outside of our little RE.net corner of the blogosphere. One of the grand poobahs of the blogosphere, Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine, exults in a post entitled, “Take That, 6 Percenters!”. Why, he’s positively leaping with joy: The monopolistic hold big real estate agents have had on information — on access … Read more
I’m seriously up to my eyeballs in my dayjob (plus, I have to go to my second job of raising two little boys under the age of three after my dayjob — this second job is a LOT HARDER than my dayjob, I have to say…) but I had to emerge and say a word … Read more
A reader of Dustin’s sent him an email that both were kind enough to allow to be published at 4realz. The reader, a member of a MLS committee, raises some very interesting and very important questions provoked by the discussion on Cluetrain marketing in real estate between Dustin and myself. Read the whole thing. This … Read more
Now, this is good news from NAR: The integrity of data is a foundation to the orderly Real Estate market. The Real Estate Transaction Standards (RETS) provides a vendor neutral, secure approach to exchanging listing information between the broker and the MLS. In order to ensure that the goal of maintaining an orderly marketplace is … Read more
Thanks to InmanBlog, I learn that there is an ethical dilemma brewing in RE.net. It appears that NAR has promulgated a new standard This standard falls under Article 12 in the Realtor code, which provides that Realtors “shall be honest and truthful in their real estate communications and shall present a true picture in their … Read more
With everyone focusing on the gloomy residential real estate market, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at what’s happening over on the Dark Side of the Force, aka, commercial real estate. CoStar released their Q4 financial results recently, and boy, are they impressive: BETHESDA, Md., Feb. 20 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — CoStar Group, … Read more