Brokerage, Value, Stewardship

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnmvrknV_iA I’ve been incredibly busy with client work and with the excitement that is Neighborhood Advocates, so blogging has been light. Who am I kidding — blogging has been nonexistent. But I was at RETSO last week when one of the panel discussions really struck me. Since I also have an upcoming presentation about brokerages, it … Read more

A Tale of Two Listings: Foreshadowing of the Future

I recently came across two different listings online, and the difference between the two was striking. One listing had 16 photos, with good descriptions of each, and the listing detail was 18 paragraphs long and filled with great detail like: The building is a walk-up and is not handicapped-accesible. There is a flight of stairs to … Read more

Brokerages and Customer Service: Show Me the Money

This will be brief, as I am in Las Vegas and both the dinner reservation and the craps table are calling me. But if I don’t write this now, I’m afraid it’ll never see the light of day. At Stefan Swanepoel’s T3 Summit event that just finished yesterday (a wonderful couple of days of really high-level … Read more

Association, MLS, RPAC: An Idea for Political Domination

File this one under: “There Is No Box” kind of thinking. The reason why this isn’t a Black Paper (yet) is that I haven’t checked with enough lawyers to see all of the possible pitfalls, but that might happen sooner rather than later. A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that I was having an … Read more

Will CLAW Be the Waterloo for Anti-Syndication Forces?

[This post was written to be posted almost a month ago, when the Errol Samuelson news broke, wiping the media calendar clean. And then I went on the road. Nonetheless, the issues raised here and the access to Zillow and to Annie Ives are important enough and I think still relevant, so I figured I’d … Read more

CRMLS Makes Like Lewis & Clark

I’m still on the road, and overly occupied, but the latest news about CRMLS (a former client) is exciting and deserves at least a couple of comments. From Andrea Brambila’s report: Brokers who belong to the nation’s largest multiple listing service will soon get a capability they’ve long clamored for: the option to upload listing … 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

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

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