Negative Space: Reffkin and Schneider on the Future of Brokerages

It’s been over a week since I thawed out from the polar vortex that was Inman Connect NYC. I realize that people in Chicago and elsewhere in the Midwest would have loved mere 10 below zero temperatures, but for this now-southern boy, that week came with a religious awakening: hell won’t be hot, it’ll be … Read more

Seven Predictions for 2019: K-Pop Edition

[Posted earlier at Inman News; now that it’s actually 2019, figured it was safe to post to my site for posterity.] So it turns out that I started doing musical themes in 2011 with the Techno Edition for 2012. I’ve done great music (like Alison Krauss and Union Station) to hair-curlingly cringey music (like the … Read more

The Seven Most Interesting People in Real Estate, 2018 Edition

Welcome back to another edition of The Seven Most Interesting People in Real Estate. I know, I know, as a friend of mine said on Facebook, “Great, yet another list.” It does seem like there are a lot of lists in our industry. But what the hell, I do this mostly for fun anyhow, and this … Read more

December Red Dot: Darkness Comes – Excerpts and Special Offer

The December Red Dot, Darkness Comes: Q3 and the Rise of Redfin, is now published and live. I’m pretty proud of it, but I thought I would write this post because I think this report might actually be important. If you are in real estate, or interested in the industry, if you read nothing else … Read more

On the Opendoor Acquisition of Open Listings

Just thought I’d drop a brief (well, for me) note here about Opendoor’s acquisition of Open Listings, in between preparing for hurricane Florence…. Inman News has the story: Flush with hundreds of millions in venture funding, the fast-growing home-buying and selling startup Opendoor is making its first acquisition: Open Listings, a discount brokerage with a team of salaried in-house … Read more

A Note on eXp and Margins

Happy Friday, everybody. I’m deep in the heart of final edits on the June Red Dot report, tentatively titled “Zillow, Redfin, Realogy: The Shape of Things to Come” so haven’t been blogging as much. But in writing the June report, I looked at eXp in some detail as a comparable. In future reports, I may … Read more

Method to the Madness: Thoughts on the Redfin 2017 Earnings Call

One of my recurring dreams is that some kind of IPO fever sweeps real estate, and dozens of brokerages go public. I want to see KW’s numbers, hear Hoddy Hanna on an earnings call, gain transparency into what Kuba over at RealtyOne is thinking, etc. I can’t wait for Compass to go public, so we … Read more