Happy Sunday night. It’s been a long weekend preparing a cabin for short term rental, but I have a very quick question for everyone. As you know, I went on a fairly deep dive earlier this year into blockchain and its impact on real estate. I rather enjoyed it, and I think the people I … Read more
Just watched a YouTube videos from Nicholas Gerli of Reventure Consulting that has me wondering about the housing market in the years to come. The big question is, could investor demand alone sustain current (and future) home prices? You can watch the full video below, but the fundamental take is that home prices will collapse, … Read more
The party in San Diego is now over, and judging from the pictures on Facebook, it looks to have been quite a party. I’d say that CoStar made a memorable entry into the residential real estate industry. But the other headlines coming out of San Diego convince me more than ever that it is high … Read more
Three years ago, I wrote a post titled, “The Case for iBuyer Becoming the Default.” It came up in my social media feeds, thanks to the hard work of my social media manager. And the timing couldn’t have been better, since I’ve been thinking that I need to reassess iBuying as a category in light … Read more
I’m on the road, which means airports and hotel rooms. And I’m on an intellectual road trip as well, trying to puzzle out what the future of the industry looks like with Zillow’s recent withdrawal from Afghanistan shutdown of Zillow Homes. So I thought I’d give myself a break and look at something that caught … Read more
I’m still traveling around the country, but wanted to jot something down real quick from a random hotel room in Houston. Based on this story in Business Insider about Project Ketchup, I’m expecting fantastic things from Opendoor’s earnings call. [Note: I own OPEN in my personal portfolio.] All of the jubilation from the industry about … Read more
Ben Thompson at Stratechery, the man responsible for setting Zillow on its path into iBuying, has published a newsletter discussing Zillow’s exit from iBuying. He’s very generous to Rich Barton and to Zillow, and eats a bit of crow. I rarely find anything in Thompson’s writings and opinions to disagree with, because he is one … Read more
I was in mid-air when the Zillow Q3 earnings release happened. By the time I had landed, there were dozens of texts, emails, and of course, social media postings. There were and are a lot of hot takes. I’m reasonably convinced that all or most are wrong in some significant way. Many are laughably shallow. … Read more
I was asked multiple times over the last few days about Zillow pausing its iBuying business, over email from some of you and in person at Inman that concluded last week. I haven’t written on it because I didn’t think it was a big deal, and others have already written on it. But since I’ve … Read more