Heaven's Got A Plan For You: The Future of Organized Real Estate, Part 1

It’s been a while since I’ve written. Blame a travel schedule that would be marriage-destroying, were I actually married, combined with far too much to do and far too little time to do it in. But I realized recently that I have actually never set down in words one of the main themes of my speaking … Read more

Dual Agency in the News: Horiike v. Coldwell Banker Goes to CA Supreme Court

I’ll be honest. I didn’t know about this critical case on dual agency in real estate, originally filed in 2014. The case is Horiike v. Coldwell Banker and in all likelihood, most of you already know about it being the Best Informed Readers in Real Estate. But a reader sent the case to me along with … Read more

Haus.com and the Future of Transparency

Recently, a bit of a brouhaha broke out in real estate social media around a new startup called Haus.com from a cofounder of Uber. Rismedia has the story: The co-founder of Uber today introduced a new platform that considerably boosts transparency in real estate transactions. The venture, named Haus, is an “open and fair real estate … Read more

Does Diversity Matter in Real Estate? (Yes, I'm Going There)

I was supposed to moderate a track of panels at Inman called Provoke, and I was really looking forward to some of those conversations, until a family situation arose that makes attending Inman impossible. (We’re all fine; my ex has to be out of the country, so I need to make sure my two boys … Read more

Things To Worry About From the British Columbia IAG Report

The other day, I let you all know about the bomb that British Columbia in Canada dropped on the real estate industry. I’ve spent some time reading the full report, and while this is still sort of an early first-reaction, I think there are a few things to worry about from that report, certainly for Canadian … Read more

British Columbia, Canada, Drops A Bomb on the Industry

I’m reading through the report right now, and will likely have to write up a bunch of posts on this, but… in case you were not aware, the provincial government (that’s the equivalent of the state government here in the US) of British Columbia just dropped a bomb on the real estate industry. You can … Read more

Forest for the Trees: the NAR Expenses Edition

I’ve been really, really busy with a project I’m getting ready to announce/roll out (speaking of which, if you’re an Association Executive or Association Leadership, I’d like to chat with you 🙂 ) but I couldn’t help but chime in on a minor storm in a teapot that Inman News brewed up recently. I speak of … Read more

NAR Midyear 2016: Rumors, Questions, and Observations

[UPDATE: Please see the Comment below the post, in which Cary Sylvester clarified a couple of things raised in this post.] I had originally planned on writing a day-by-day diary of sorts for Midyear as I did a while back, but… frankly, things were moving so fast, and I was too busy sitting in meetings … Read more

The Church of REALTOR Faces A Fundamental Question

[You can consider this Part 2 of an ongoing series that started with my last post about comments on MLS and Upstream, but really this is more like Part 372 of an ongoing series about the future of organized real estate. You can blame my pie-in-the-sky high-level theorizing on my philosophy degree. But anyhow…] Organized … Read more