Last week, Greg Fischer pondered what should come with houses: I wonder if anyone else finds it strange that resale homes convey with dozens of systems like furnaces, flooring, and fixtures yet don’t have warranties against most, if any, of the items responsible for the…

Last week, I investigated category kings further. On the residential side of real estate, the unwavering category king is Zillow Group. In addition to their flagship brand, they own Trulia, StreetEasy, and even power Yahoo! Real Estate. Realtor.com is a distant second, with no legitimate…

Last week, Greg dove into the topic of Zillow and referrals with his piece called Buying Leads on Layover. Just a week after Move announced the acquisition of Opcity, Zillow announced a new additional Premier Broker pricing product based on a “performance advertising expense” or, more plainly,…

Since there is content posted both on the public Geek Estate Blog (founded in 2007) and within the the GEM (Geek Estate Mastermind), I wanted to take a minute to explain what the difference between the two are. I want to be fully transparent with…

Last week, I talked about the Keller Williams new consumer play: purchasing Smarter Agent. I’ve long been a skeptic of agent branded/template apps, for two main reasons: User acquisition costs are too high. Zero unique functionality meaning zero reason for a buyer to download / use…

Last week, I talked about the future power brokers of the industry. Smart homes are a sign of the inevitable adoption of a home OS coming (see Curbed’ Home of the Future): Who is best positioned to profit once the dust has settled and the home…

There’s a real estate tech company based in my hometown Seattle that I’m a longtime fan of. No, I’m not referring to that industry tech titan I formerly worked for. Nor am I referring to a certain billion dollar tech-enabled brokerage, with a red logo….

Last week, Greg went deep on “Certainty as a Service”, as a follow up to his piece the previous week on certainty for all. When reverse engineering the components that add up to a sum of certainty that Opendoor and Zillow are selling into the…

Last week, I dove deep on pocket listings and the strategic implications of the 2018 landscape I laid out. The key question is whether the strategy of using pocket listings to build a buyer audience that sticks around after the market turns prove fruitful for…

Last week, I imagined a world where Zillow Offers is the greatest strategic mistake in the company’s history. Flipping houses directly adds significant operational complexity utilizing on the ground employees and contractors, with low margins. Was their original entry to the market, a marketplace enabling…