I Think Jeff Jarvis Is in for a Shock…

The NAR-DOJ Settlement is news outside of our little RE.net corner of the blogosphere.  One of the grand poobahs of the blogosphere, Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine, exults in a post entitled, “Take That, 6 Percenters!”.  Why, he’s positively leaping with joy: The monopolistic hold big real estate agents have had on information — on access … Read more

The NAR-DOJ Settlement: Journey from Chaos to Confusion

I’m seriously up to my eyeballs in my dayjob (plus, I have to go to my second job of raising two little boys under the age of three after my dayjob — this second job is a LOT HARDER than my dayjob, I have to say…) but I had to emerge and say a word … Read more

Big Brand Blogging

Should the Big Brands in real estate start blogging? Joel Burslem over at FOREM thinks so: Even with its obvious bias, the blog is actually a fantastic resource for anyone interested in staying on top of the beer wars. Several years ago I worked for Molson, before it became Molson Coors, so the brewing industry … Read more

Metrics of International Real Estate Business

In a recent post, I complained about the dearth of data when it comes to talking about international real estate. Even though I was a bit cheeky, Simon Baker of REA Group actually posted a comment on that with some actual estadistica: For example, around 12% of the traffic to our Australian site (www.realestate.com.au) comes … Read more

Renting vs. Buying — Zillow Wiki Swings and Misses

In commercial real estate, there is a standard analysis that brokers conduct: the Lease-Buy analysis. It is meant to show the client the financial impact of leasing space vs. buying the building outright. For whatever reason, this is not a standard analysis that residential agents conduct on behalf of their clients. You can find online … Read more

If Yer Gonna Raise the Bar, Then Raise the Whole Saloon

Interestingly enough, just after I wrote about the problem of too many real estate agents overall, I found a post by Dave Phillips over at Bloodhound Blog called “Raising the Bar or Bellying Up to It“. It’s insightful and hilarious. Recommended reading for sure. I’m thinking, what’s all this Sam Adams reference? This is no … Read more

Love in a Time of Cholera

Depending on who you ask, we are either headed for a recession or in one already. There seems to be some sort of a political angle to the whole question of recession, so who knows what the truth is in an election year? What everyone seems to agree on is that we’re certainly not in … Read more