After the past week, it is rather delightful to be writing about real estate issues for a change, rather than big social questions and difficult issues. Without further ado, let’s get into it. Mike DelPrete, a consultant and analyst of real estate technology, sent an email to his list today with the title, “iBuyers Turning … Read more
In Part 1, we looked at what a Platform in real estate might look like, having been inspired by Ben Thompson at Stratechery who talked about platforms in an aggregator world. We then decided that such a platform does not exist in real estate today because of all of the disparate parts that have to … Read more
Ben Thompson at Stratechery is a great read, and he really does get my gears turning. Today’s email/post is particularly interesting as it raises some questions as to what a platform actually is and what it might look like in real estate going forward. Consider this a “big think” post in which I try to … Read more
One of my favorite moments in recent earnings calls came when Glenn Kelman, CEO of Redfin, used the phrase “delayed blast fireball” in an actual call. I ended up naming my writeup that, because as a former AD&D Dungeon Master, I got a real kick out of just how legit a nerd Kelman probably is. … Read more
Since my last quick take on this, I have had more time to investigate, research, and talk to a wide variety of people from the real estate and financial worlds. I am more convinced than ever that iBuyer will return with a roar when this current shutdown is over, and why people in the real … Read more
Since it’s been a few days since my VIP subscribers got to check out my analysis of Zillow’s Q4 earnings, I wanted to have more of a public open discussion on two incredibly important things from the Q4 earnings. Rich Barton, Zillow’s CEO, mentioned the Bob Seger song, “Turn the Page.” He was talking about … Read more
In the Q3/2019 writeup, I wrote that Zillow is not experimenting, but trying to pivot with great delicacy: My take on Q3 is that Zillow is in the midst of a BCG 2×2 Matrix exercise and a delicate point (in a good way) in the transition from Zillow 1.0 to Zillow 2.0. What they’re doing … Read more
It’s good to be home and be able to write and think out loud on issues that might impact the industry. It’s doubly good to be able to do it with the best audience out of the most informed readership in the industry. I’m actually a bit surprised that others who are far more tech-focused … Read more
In the next couple of weeks, we’ll get earnings releases from Zillow. I wish we get earnings reports from Opendoor and Offerpad, but… hey, we can only look at what we can look at. So I completed my analysis of Q4 iBuyer numbers out of Phoenix, where I have the best dataset. Let’s see what … Read more