What L'Affaire d'Errol et Curt Means: Brief Thoughts

I’m really, really, really slammed with work so this won’t be as in-depth and searching as I’d like, but I do think it’s important to put down these semi-brief thoughts, so I can figure out what I think about what Zillow’s recent personnel moves means. Let me not bury the lede. L’Affaire d’Errol et Curt … Read more

Ease Up On the Glamor Shots…

First, the positive, because I do so love accentuating the positives when I see them. For whatever reason, I’m more fascinated by problems and issues and doomporn and such, but it’s so nice to see real estate people doing really cool shit. The example here is Real Living, based in DC. The co-founder and co-CEO, … Read more

In Which I Speak to Steve Berkowitz, CEO of Move, Inc.

It’s now been a couple of days, and Errol Samuelson’s defection from Realtor.com to Zillow remains the top story in the world of real estate. I posted two questions about the move yesterday (and had one answered very quickly), and reached out to both Errol and to Move for comments. As of this writing, I … Read more

Two Questions on Errol Samuelson's Dramatic Move

I had this long amazing post about the future of the MLS in the works… when Godzilla came onshore, thereby obliterating the real estate industry news cycle. Errol Samuelson, Chief Strategy Officer of Move and President of Realtor.com, is now the new Chief Industry Development Officer at Zillow. The whole industry is abuzz, and our … Read more

The start of the end for Realtor.com?

Well, if you haven’t seen the late afternoon news wires yet, let me be the first to tell you Zillow just hired Errol Samuelson, president of Realtor.com and chief strategy officer for parent company Move, Inc.  Errol will take on the role of Chief Industry Development Officer and will report to Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff. Some … Read more

The CLAW Saga Gets More Interesting: Art Carter Administers A Beatdown on Annie Ives

The CLAW/TheMLS saga gets more interesting. For background, read this Inman News article by Andrea Brambila, who does consistently decent reporting on these arcane issues for our industry. Basically, CLAW decided to delay syndication feeds via ListHub by 48 hours. Chaos ensued. I’m trying to find out some more stuff about it, but the latest … Read more

A Good Step… First of Thousands on the Long Road

Just saw on Facebook that NAR has renamed the “Midyear Legislative Meetings & Trade Expo” — its annual meeting in Washington DC — to “REALTOR Party Convention & Trade Expo“. Seeing as how I’ve been preachin’ (to the choir, mostly) for quite some time that the REALTOR Association needs to focus on its core competency … Read more

Dear MLS – Raise Prices, By A Lot

I have to be on an airplane in the not-too-distant future, but I really wanted to share this with everyone, because I think it’s so interesting. So fascinating. Recently, I asked a hypothetical question in one of my favorite Facebook groups: If you click on over, you can read all the comments. What I was … Read more

The Realcomp Anti-Trust Ruling Will Affect MLS Syndication

Inman News reports that the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled against Realcomp II in a years-long case: Michigan’s largest multiple listing service “unreasonably restrained competition” among real estate brokers by refusing to transmit exclusive agency property listings favored by discount brokers to Realtor.com and other public-facing Web sites, a federal appeals court has ruled. … Read more