When Rich Barton took (back) over as CEO of Zillow earlier this year, I wrote a Red Dot and titled it, “The Return of the King.” I didn’t realize then that the king was not just a fighter, but a gambler. With giant brass ones. After the Q2 earnings results, I know that now. Zillow’s … Read more
After RE/MAX reported last quarter, I wrote a post saying that RE/MAX was poised on the brink of greatness, but was refusing to make the jump. Q2 earnings results do nothing to make me change my mind on that, but now, there are signs that RE/MAX is going to have to make some difficult choices … Read more
As a former Dungeon Master all through junior high school and part of high school, I found it absolutely thrilling that Glenn Kelman, CEO of Redfin, used the phrase in the Q2 earnings call. Thank you Glenn for making all of us former (and present day) nerds feel a little bit better about our misspent … 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