We have a fourth player at the publicly traded pure-play residential brokerage poker table – Fathom – and it looks eerily similar to eXp in many ways and strikingly different in other ways. Of the four, Fathom, eXp, and Redfin market themselves as tech-enabled brokers…

Waiting for the Next Big Thing – or Not I read posts and articles all the time where opinions are dressed up as news pieces. Not to pick on Market Watch (who basically lifted these “chicken little” comments from Vice) or Inman but these are…

Recent developments surrounding WeWork have brought into question again the future of the two big Unicorns in the real estate industry.   Compass and Opendoor Back in July, this person (me) didn’t think too much about the future of the two big unicorns, Compass and Opendoor….

September 11, 2001 It was a normal Tuesday on the calendar for most people in the U.S. when they got up from bed that morning. I was still in bed because I had just flown cross country to Southern California the previous night. Although I…

Is Red really the new Black? It’s a catchy phrase and it reflects the apparent sentiment of some of the bigger players and their backers. Along with the other term used in the same discussion, “sustained unprofitability”, it posits that Success in the real estate…

It isn’t the same as turning lead into gold but the latest talk about red and black in the real estate industry is still nice fodder for the pundits even if it doesn’t really reflect reality. Second quarter earnings announcements and SEC filings were released…

Crystal Ball Time These are not hard and fast forecasts for the industry, just possible future scenarios with a percent probability (assigned by yours truly) based on the previously noted factors in Part 1. Two huge disclaimers: The pending legal actions could magnify, distort, or…

There’s been a lot of talk lately about the future of not just the players in the real estate industry but the industry itself. Who wins and who loses in the next several years depends on various combinations of many factors against the backdrop of…

AI (artificial intelligence) does work across dozens of industries. Just ask Amazon, Starbucks, Target, and Walmart. What do those four have in common? Years of operational data, the money to invest in such an initiative, and experts in the discipline who know how to balance…