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
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
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
In my final Red Dot, where I looked at the full year 2018 earnings results for the public companies in real estate, I titled the section on Realogy as “The Deathwatch Gets Serious.” My concerns then were centered on not just the numbers, which were historically bad, but on the strategy. I wrote then that … Read more
Recently, there was an excellent post about iBuyers from Homebloq, a company that appears to sell some sort of a mobile app “connecting Chicago brokers and buyers” according to the website. The blog is not signed, but I think it’s written by Austin James, the co-founder of Homebloq, and is titled, “How iBuyers Die.” I’ve … Read more
If you’ve been to Notorious ROB before, you will have noticed the design update to the blog. Most of the major changes have been under the hood, but I’m generally satisfied with it. I will likely keep making some design tweaks going forward, but wanted to tell you about two major changes. Premium Content Changes … Read more
When I began writing this report, I did not think that a mere update on quarterly results would reach over 12,000 words and require so much work. After all, the annual report is the really important one, and the quarterly reports are mere milestones along the path. But with all of the changes going on … Read more
Introduction Realogy reported its Q1/2013 results last week. This report will be shorter than my full year 2012 Report, as there were not as many eye-opening revelations from either the numbers or the management commentary on results. Nonetheless, I look at not just the publicly reported numbers, but the core operating numbers, listen in on … Read more