Last week, I had an opportunity to attend an extraordinary meeting with some of the most senior people at NAR, on the topic of social media. I have to thank Jim Duncan for putting the meeting together, and of course, I am grateful to the leadership at NAR for being willing to listen to a … Read more
In a time lost in memory, in a world far far away, I openly hypothesized that the future of real estate brokerage might look more like a law firm than brokers of today: Everyone else is an employee. They get a salary, they get benefits, and if business is good, and they’re good, then they … Read more
Something to consider from the world of commercial real estate, Brokerages Retool Rainmakers: With office leasing and investment sales volume reaching new lows across the country, big brokerages are retraining idled dealmakers to become service providers rather than cowboys intent on roping the next mega deal. Brokerages have enormous fixed costs and in this challenging … Read more
Marc Davison’s newest post is, as is normal for him, a wonderful read filled with cool and interesting insights. Go read it in full. The key passage, I think, is this: But over the decades, the love waned. As new competitors grew into the marketplace, these establishments remained still in their own murky waters of … Read more
I recently discovered Brandie Young, a fellow marketer, via her first blogpost on Agent Genius. That post is interesting in and of itself. And I’ve added her blog to the blogroll here. But this comment from a Barry Cunningham on that post is really interesting to the whole Robnecks v. Kristians debate: You have described … Read more
As some of the commenters on my original thread have already surmised, Aybaf is not a real company. It is a thought experiment that came about as the result of my hours-long conversation with an executive at one of the top web real estate companies. My first thought was to call this new concept Trillow, … Read more
The Setup The talented and lovely Kris Berg is but one of the able spokespersons on the vanguard of a movement I have whimsically dubbed the “Kristians”. This is an important movement, with very important points to make, and even as I disagree with them on points, I take their arguments seriously. Essentially, the Kristian … Read more
I just heard of this new company that is planning to launch in mid-2009, called Aybaf. It is a new virtual brokerage model with the following pertinent points: A world-class consumer web portal, currently generating north of 2 million unique visitors per month Roughly 15,000 web-based leads every month, growing at 10% on average month … Read more
I’ve been engaged in much discussion of late on the future of real estate, and we’re having a debate right now between those who believe that the future is made up of numerous independent agents (or small agent teams) operating in low-cost, low-service brokerage models and those who believe that the future actually belongs to … Read more