Rob Hahn

Managing Partner of 7DS Associates, and the grand poobah of this here blog. Once called "a revolutionary in a really nice suit", people often wonder what I do for a living because I have the temerity to not talk about my clients and my work for clients. Suffice to say that I do strategy work for some of the largest organizations and companies in real estate, as well as some of the smallest startups and agent teams, but usually only on projects that interest me with big implications for reforming this wonderful, crazy, lovable yet frustrating real estate industry of ours.

Notorious ROB is Moving to Substack

by

I started Notorious R.O.B. back in January of 2008. Back then, WordPress was more or less the state of the art in technology and I was extremely excited to venture into the world of blogging — something I had actually been doing for a while in political and comics/gaming space before 2008. After over 15 … Read more

Introducing Decentre Property Exchange

by

In my post about the likely impact of the commission lawsuits against NAR and four corporations, I mentioned that I had a conflict of interest when it came to the issue of real estate auctions because I had been working on an auction-related initiative for a while. I had kept the initiative relatively quiet because … Read more

Recap and Summary: Likely Impact of the Commission Lawsuits

by

[NOTE: This is a VIP post, for subscribers only. However, given the importance of the topic, I’m going to make it open to all for a couple of weeks. Dumbass comments will be deleted since that’s one major benefit of VIP.] As promised, I thought I would recap and summarize my thoughts on what the … Read more

Reading the Moehrl v NAR Class Action Certification Opinion

by

Judge Andrea Wood of the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois just granted class certification to the plaintiffs in Moehrl v. NAR, the mega lawsuit dealing with real estate commissions. This apparently sent shockwaves throughout the real estate industry, which puzzles me a bit. But then again, I’ve been following this lawsuit … Read more

Fun with ChatGPT: How Will the DOJ’s Appeal Fare?

by

So last Friday, the Department of Justice formally filed an appeal of the trial court’s ruling in its fight against NAR with the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. This was as obvious and as predictable as the sun rising in the East. I wrote about that in a special public VIP post … Read more

Minnesota Legislature’s Anti Corporate Landlord Bill

by

For a couple of years now, I’ve been warning that one consequence of the broken housing market will be politics and that the first domino to fall will be the so-called “corporate landlords.” I based that on things that people like Elizabeth Warren were saying in Senate hearings. I know that a number of cities … Read more

Quick Add-On Thoughts on Banking, Politics, and Real Estate

by

Yesterday, I wrote my first post in a while about the bank failures, government response, and the implications for real estate. In it, I wrote: Now, every depositor at every bank in the United States is guaranteed by the FDIC and that $250K limit simply does not exist in practice. So if you’re Roku, and … Read more

We’ll Party as the World Ends

by

Writing has been very light. Who am I kidding? It’s been nonexistent. Part of it is that I’ve been very busy with projects, but the other part is that there really hasn’t been much of interest that I haven’t written about over and over before. Enjoy the silence, I figure. I break that silence because … Read more

CoStar Not Acquiring Realtor.com: Speculating on Why Not

by

I’ve been 100% heads-down on a project. But thought I’d take a moment to comment on the news that CoStar and News Corp are no longer in talks about Realtor.com. This is not a Q4 review; that still remains to be done, probably after all the reports as there have been very few worthy of … Read more