The REALTOR Rally and the Desperate Need For A New Political Action Paradigm

This is a tough post to write. I’m actually debating for the first time while typing this into the little WordPress window whether I would actually hit “Publish” at the end of it. If you’re reading this, it means that I’ve overcome whatever hesitation I’ve had, but I want you to understand how hard it … Read more

A Government Looking to Elect A New People: A Response to Bill Lublin on the Future of NAR

  A few weeks back, Bill Lublin and I engaged in a spirited debate about the future of the Association, stemming from this post of mine from March. Bill’s initial response is here. Well, my post then became the basis for my presentation at RETSO, which gave me impetus to expand on the topic. During … Read more

Expanding On My RETSO Speech On the Future of the REALTOR Association

  I’ve been traveling pretty much nonstop since attending the best event on the real estate conference calendar: RETechSouth (or RETSO for short). As always, Brad Nix, Mike Pennington, and Ben Carter (with an amazing team of people) put on a fantastic event. I did a little debate on syndication with Jay Thompson, leveraging my … Read more

Three Questions on the NAR/Bipartisan Policy Center Paper

The Bipartisan Policy Center — a think tank based in Washington DC once described as the place “where moderate Republicans go to embrace their inner liberal” — has released a new study in conjunction with NAR, the Urban Institute, and USC that is worth reading in full if you’re interested in topics like future of … Read more

Ask Not What Your NAR Can Do For You…

For whatever reason, there’s quite bit of chatter going on around the RE.net about the future and role of the REALTOR Association. This Facebook Group is more or less ground zero of the discussion. But I saw an interesting take on the topic from Victor Lund, the influential proprietor of the WAVGroup. Here is his … Read more

In Which I Try to Make Sense of the Austin IDX Kerfuffle

  I had to interrupt my series on Redfin 3.0 and what it might mean for brokerages because parts of the RE.net just blew up over the past day or two. AgentGenius (AGBeat?) reports that there is a dispute going on in Austin, Texas, between a group of brokers and agents (who mostly serve the … Read more

Seven Predictions for 2012, The Techno Edition

Continuing the tradition that started when the earth was young (or last year… depending on your definition of “time”), I’d like to present this year’s version of “Predictions Guaranteed to be Wrong, Or Your Money Back”! As we saw in the report card post, last year, I went 4.5 for 7 in predictions. I hope … Read more

Reviewing My 2011 Predictions

In 2009, I batted .600 in predictions for 2010.  And I thought that was fun. It’s one thing to make predictions; it’s another to look back and see how those predictions fared. How did I do last year in predicting events of 2011? I was hoping to be maybe 1 out of 7, since most of … Read more