The Real Estate Journal is reporting that the largest landlord in San Francisco is putting apartment properties up for sale, and raising some questions: After five years as the most aggressive buyer of apartment buildings in San Francisco, the Lembi family has — for now — become the city’s biggest seller. The 18 buildings up … Read more
Speaking of Dustin Luther, he has posted a fantastic interview with Marty Frame of Cyberhomes. Read the whole thing. It’s filled with interesting observations and thoughts. None more interesting than the conclusion: What do you see as some of the biggest changes coming to online real estate in the next two years? The herd will … Read more
Michael Arrington at TechCrunch takes note of a new startup called GenieTown that is aiming at the local services space. From his post: The company says they are addressing the long tail of local services. The GenieTown site allows local service providers (plumbers, dentists, whatever) to put up a web presence. Users looking for providers … Read more
If you care about legal issues, this is a must read post from Real Estate, Real Competition, and The Law. Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law (CLC) sued Craigslist for violating the Fair Housing Act and got pretty much slapped around by the trial court. CLC appealed, and the Seventh Circuit heard … Read more
I know I take contrarian views to much of the received wisdom on the RE.net, but… well, I can’t help it. Since I’m not flogging any product, or trying to get leads from this blog, or any such thing, but just write on topics that interest me, I suppose I find it more fun to … Read more
After my… ahem… tirade against Movesmart.org, I felt kinda bad. I mean, they seem like such sweet, nice people with such good intentions. Granted, I still stand by everything I wrote in that post, but… in the spirit of wishing them well, I offer the following suggestions. I base them on this page on Netsquared.org … Read more
Looks like the latest CoStar blog post takes the rivalry between CoStar and Loopnet to a new level. It’s exciting — almost as if we’re in a Presidential Election season. Oh yeah…. Anyhow, CoStar basically pimpslapped Loopnet’s membership claims and alleges false advertising: If the impressive-sounding number LoopNet claims as its “registered users” is really … Read more
I was doing some research at work when I came across something absolutely bizarre. There is no list anywhere of the most powerful brands in residential real estate. In commercial, there is such a list, compiled and maintained by Lipsey: Top 25 Commercial Real Estate Brands. (PDF) Why is there no equivalent in residential real … Read more
There’s a bit of buzz building out there in the RE.web about a new… company? nonprofit organization? called MoveSmart.org. It’s a website that is looking launch in Q3 of 2008, and I gather that they are doing fundraisers and lining up corporate sponsors and such. From the MoveSmart.org website itself we get the following description. … Read more