CoStar Not Acquiring Realtor.com: Speculating on Why Not

I’ve been 100% heads-down on a project. But thought I’d take a moment to comment on the news that CoStar and News Corp are no longer in talks about Realtor.com. This is not a Q4 review; that still remains to be done, probably after all the reports as there have been very few worthy of … Read more

CoStar + Realtor.com = ???

I apologize for the lengthy silence. I’ve been heads down on final prep for launching a new project I’ve been working on for over a year now. You’ll hear about it soon enough, I promise. And I hope it’ll interest all of you. In fact, I know it will interest some of you. I know, … Read more

The Big Yawn: Realtor.com Dips Its Toes In to iBuyer World

It appears that Realtor.com has finally made a foray into the most important thing to happen to real estate since the invention of the 30-year fixed rate mortgage. And I can’t help but yawn. So many phrases come to mind: What took you so long? A day late, and two billion dollars short. The Big … Read more

Seven Predictions for 2020: The Rat Pack Edition

Earlier this year, Sunny and I made her third (my second) move across this great country of ours in three years, landing in Las Vegas. I have to say, so far, we’re quite in love with this city. Most of you only know Las Vegas from The Strip… which is unfortunate. It’s quite like judging … Read more

Thinking About the MLS: What Do You Really Want?

As most of you know, I’ve been on the road for the past month or so — three weeks of that in Asia touring Korea and visiting Tokyo, Japan. The image above is from the Robot Restaurant in Shinjuku, billed as “Robot Burlesque”. Except there were no robots, and no burlesque, so…. In any event, … 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

Realtor.com Tries to Get the Balance Right

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1_9WYllhiQ Without question, the big topics coming out of NAR Midyear Legislative Meetings were  about RPR-AMP, Upstream, and the future of the MLS. I’ve already written a few posts about them, and expect to write more in the future. But lost in all of that was a big rebrand and relaunch by Move of Realtor.com. … Read more

In Which I Point Out the Obvious, With Numbers

James Dwiggins, CEO of Nexthome, has become one of my favorite commentators on the state of the industry. He’s extremely smart, has years and years of experience as a broker and now as a franchise operator, and is without question one of the tallest men in the real estate industry. (Maybe Walt Baczkowski, CEO of … Read more

MarketWatch Posts Nonsense; I Have A Suggestion

Real estate journalism in the mainstream media is not exactly the stuff of Pulitzers. But even by that low standard, this “news story” from MarketWatch (via Realtor.com) is amazingly incoherent. Titled “Half of Americans Can’t Afford Their House“, the main thesis of the article is that housing affordability is a serious crisis: Over half of … Read more