I’ve been traveling pretty much nonstop since attending the best event on the real estate conference calendar: RETechSouth (or RETSO for short). As always, Brad Nix, Mike Pennington, and Ben Carter (with an amazing team of people) put on a fantastic event. I did a little debate on syndication with Jay Thompson, leveraging my … Read more
Over on the Raise the Bar Facebook Group, I posted a question to the thousand-plus members: Question for this group, because it has so many ultra-engaged and informed people in it. If your MLS proposed to change fees from a flat-fee subscription to a percentage of closed transaction (NB: FMLS in Atlanta area does this), … Read more
The perennial discussion around “what makes an agent bad, good or great” has taken an interesting turn. Some sixty odd comments into the thread, which featured numerous adjectives, we get this exchange between two brilliant people who know of which they speak. Josette Skilling, a REALTOR from Maryland, wrote: Great is in the eye of … Read more
The Bipartisan Policy Center — a think tank based in Washington DC once described as the place “where moderate Republicans go to embrace their inner liberal” — has released a new study in conjunction with NAR, the Urban Institute, and USC that is worth reading in full if you’re interested in topics like future of … Read more
For whatever reason, there’s quite bit of chatter going on around the RE.net about the future and role of the REALTOR Association. This Facebook Group is more or less ground zero of the discussion. But I saw an interesting take on the topic from Victor Lund, the influential proprietor of the WAVGroup. Here is his … Read more
Part 1 is here, and Part 2 is here. Thus far, we have explored why Redfin 3.0 is significant, and the hypothesis that the real estate consumer cannot, will not, or in any event does not form relationships with companies or with brands, but only with another person: the agent. We have looked at the … Read more
(Part 1 is here) So in the last post, I made the case that Redfin 3.0 is significant because of who made the decision. Redfin was and remains (a) an innovator in brokerage business models, (b) a technology leader, and (c) led by smart people who don’t make snap decisions. Their decision to move … Read more
So many interesting items in the news these days. Last week has been a busy week for blogging. And it ended on a most interesting note. Following all of the excitement around Zillow and Howard Hanna and all that, I saw this news from Redfin: Introducing Redfin 3.0: Redfin Becomes a No-Brainer Redfin is … Read more
Continuing the tradition that started when the earth was young (or last year… depending on your definition of “time”), I’d like to present this year’s version of “Predictions Guaranteed to be Wrong, Or Your Money Back”! As we saw in the report card post, last year, I went 4.5 for 7 in predictions. I hope … Read more