I’m gearing up to release the next two big annual pieces — grading myself on last year’s predictions and 2022 predictions — but I got yet another email from some PR firm: Investment in virtual real estate has become the talk of the town in the real estate world as millions are being poured into … Read more
Welcome to another installment of an annual tradition around here: the Seven Most Interesting People in Real Estate in 2021. I look forward to this post, as well as my Seven Predictions post, each year. Last year, I went out of my way to select interesting people who weren’t the Obvious Choices. This year, I’m … Read more
I’ve got a very busy week, but saw something on YouTube that made me want to explore a topic that I do plan on looking into deeper. So a brief post that is mostly a series of questions, all of which culminate in this one: Why is anybody buying mortgage-backed securities in 2021? Obviously, the … Read more
For the past few years, the attention of the industry leadership has been focused on the issue of commission compression. The Moehrl lawsuit was the beginning, but the involvement of the DOJ and now the FTC is raising real concerns about what happens to the 6% real estate commission that has been the default for … Read more
I was going to start the transition to the new approach to Notorious ROB in the new year. But frankly, there’s just too much to talk about and I can’t wait that long. So just imagine that this was posted on New Year’s Day of 2022 and we’ll both pretend that the transition began then, … Read more
I began writing Notorious ROB on January 16, 2008, with Hello World: I like blogging, from time to time. Since I am now working at a company that doesn’t have enormous legal departments and such wanting to look over my shoulders about what I do in my personal time, on my personal blog, I can … 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