I started this post during my great Westward Ho! adventure, which was five days of driving across this great country in my car. That’s a lot of time in the car, which gives one plenty of time to talk to friends by phone and to think about stuff. Both happened on this trip, and at … Read more
As many longtime readers know, Andrew Flachner is a good friend of mine, and a wonderful young technology executive. I like Andrew, I respect Andrew, and I thought both of those things while not singing drunken karaoke with the man. That is not to say that we haven’t had our (intellectual) disagreements. I find that … Read more
Seriously, I think I could just write a real estate angle to most of Ben Thompson’s articles and updates from Stratechery, and fill the content calendar easily. I just wrote about his public weekly article on Tech and Antitrust and how it might apply to Zillow. Today comes a Daily Update where Ben talks about … Read more
I’m back from the week on the road, but about to embark on yet another week on the road… so wanted to get this short post up for your weekend reading pleasure. If you’re not already subscribed to the amazing Scratch That podcast series from Emily Chenevert, CEO of Austin Board of REALTORS, you’re missing … Read more
I don’t often talk about RE/MAX, because it’s not a brokerage. It’s a franchisor, with a business model that doesn’t tell us a whole lot about what’s going on with fundamentals of brokerage. But it is a public company, which reports numbers, and discusses what management thinks about things. From time to time, I do … Read more
Redfin reported its Q1/2019 results earlier today… and it’s like one of those Russian nesting dolls, except it’s a bit of a mystery inside an enigma within a puzzle kind of a deal. For the first time in… well… ever as far as Redfin is concerned, I find myself not quite able to understand what … Read more
In Part 1, I looked at the economics of iBuyers generally, and concluded that we need to analyze them as market makers, using market maker economic models, rather than as investors or brokerage companies. In this part 2, I wanted to get a bit more detailed and granular, using some data I was fortunate enough … Read more
In my final Red Dot, where I looked at the full year 2018 earnings results for the public companies in real estate, I titled the section on Realogy as “The Deathwatch Gets Serious.” My concerns then were centered on not just the numbers, which were historically bad, but on the strategy. I wrote then that … Read more
Recently, there was an excellent post about iBuyers from Homebloq, a company that appears to sell some sort of a mobile app “connecting Chicago brokers and buyers” according to the website. The blog is not signed, but I think it’s written by Austin James, the co-founder of Homebloq, and is titled, “How iBuyers Die.” I’ve … Read more