On the Open Source MLS

Jeff Corbett, my good friend and former partner at 7DS Associates, recently penned a fantastic call to arms at the RETSO blog in which he got into some depth about the concept of an Open Source MLS: As a self described ‘Agent of Change’ around the real estate and mortgage space, I’ve sat in the … Read more

A Government Looking to Elect A New People: A Response to Bill Lublin on the Future of NAR

  A few weeks back, Bill Lublin and I engaged in a spirited debate about the future of the Association, stemming from this post of mine from March. Bill’s initial response is here. Well, my post then became the basis for my presentation at RETSO, which gave me impetus to expand on the topic. During … Read more

A Small Step, Fraught With Significance: ListHub Introduces "MLS Preferred" Concept

  Back in November of 2010, I wrote about Move’s acquisition of ListHub and what it might mean for “Syndication Quality”. I thought then that the reason why Move acquired ListHub was strategic — to control the source of listing data, in order to impose on its main competitors the same restrictions that Move had … Read more

Expanding On My RETSO Speech On the Future of the REALTOR Association

  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

SuperZips and Real Estate: In Which I Seek Answers from Economists

One of the most eye-opening books I’ve read in the past few years is Coming Apart: State of White America 1960-2010 by Charles Murray, a sometimes controversial scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. This is not a full book review, as there have been dozens of them already done, and there will be hundreds of … Read more

The Strange Song of Subsidies

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

Some Data I Just Don't Understand…

I think this might be a bleg (that would be a blog/beg) for help in making sense of some recent buyer data. Some of this just makes so little sense to me that I’m asking the Notorious community for assistance. The buyer data comes from Redfin. I’m focusing on it because I know Redfin’s corporate … Read more

Calling the Housing Market Bottom? Not So Fast…

Courtesy of NAR Research — one of the more valuable things on Facebook — comes this CNBC article on how investors are flooding the residential real estate market: The number of homes sold to investors more than doubled last year, as rising rents and low-priced distressed properties fueled demand. Investors, half of them using no … Read more