THE hot topic in my small cul-de-sac over Wednesday night happy hour is whether schools will ever come back. Here in Las Vegas, the Clark County School District will be going online-only to start the school year in August. There are real conflicted feelings among parents in my neighborhood, and I assume it’s the same … Read more
[UPDATED WITH RESPONSE FROM COMPASS] This will be a brief one, but it’s so interesting I had to share. I just got off the phone with a very senior executive at a major national brokerage who relayed a rumor that he or she has been hearing from other senior executives throughout the industry that the … Read more
It appears that Realtor.com has finally made a foray into the most important thing to happen to real estate since the invention of the 30-year fixed rate mortgage. And I can’t help but yawn. So many phrases come to mind: What took you so long? A day late, and two billion dollars short. The Big … Read more
It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I apologize to you all, but I’ve been neck-deep in a very important project that’s taken months of my life to setup. The last few weeks have been pretty intense. I’m not quite ready to unveil it just yet, but soon… soon…. But having found a couple of hours … Read more
This morning, I woke up to not one but two emails about Rental Beast, a new startup that proposes to become the MLS for rentals and integrate it with existing MLSs. One was from WAV Group, doing their PR thing, so I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention. But the second one was from … Read more
After the past week, it is rather delightful to be writing about real estate issues for a change, rather than big social questions and difficult issues. Without further ado, let’s get into it. Mike DelPrete, a consultant and analyst of real estate technology, sent an email to his list today with the title, “iBuyers Turning … Read more
In Part 1, we looked at what a Platform in real estate might look like, having been inspired by Ben Thompson at Stratechery who talked about platforms in an aggregator world. We then decided that such a platform does not exist in real estate today because of all of the disparate parts that have to … Read more
This was a fun one, for sure, as Errol Samuelson, Chief Industry Development Officer of Zillow, is one of the smartest guys in the industry. He’s also been around the block a few times, and in very senior roles where real estate and technology intersect. He’s also quite reticent about appearing on things like podcasts, … Read more
Ben Thompson at Stratechery is a great read, and he really does get my gears turning. Today’s email/post is particularly interesting as it raises some questions as to what a platform actually is and what it might look like in real estate going forward. Consider this a “big think” post in which I try to … Read more