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

Dear Real Estate Tech Entrepreneurs: Hey, The Buy-Side Is Done, Guys

I’m going to take a conservative estimate and say that once every few weeks, I get some PR agency emailing me with some news of a fantabulous, world-changing, paradigm-shifting (God, I love those Web 2.0 words, like paradigm), baldness-curing new technology around… you got it, home search. This is not at all an atypical example: #RealEstate Entrepreneur, Avantika Shahi Launches Revolutionary #HomeSearch Platform  … 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

Clarifying My Remarks About Upstream and the MLS at the Zillow MLS Summit

A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to speak to a group of MLS executives and leadership at the Zillow MLS Summit in Las Vegas. It was a Q&A format with Mitch Robinson from Zillow interviewing me on a number of questions and issues related to Project Upstream and the MLS. The video … Read more

In Which I Propose an Affordable Housing Solution

It’s way too late, but I have insomnia. Plus, Brad Inman of Inman News published a rare Op/Ed about Bernie Sanders’s housing plan with what seems like approval: I don’t agree with all of it, but Bernie Sanders was not afraid to put it forward. Cheers to that. Moreover, it is not a plan guided by … Read more

Inside Baseball Issue: IDX and Internet Display

In doing some research for a couple of assignments, I’ve run across something that’s quite frankly not all that interesting to anybody not in the real estate industry, which falls under the “Inside Baseball” type of stuff. For that matter, this might not be of any interest except to MLS nerds. But that’s what I … Read more