To put it bluntly, 2020 was a mess of a year. Challenges facing all industries meant many leaders found themselves figuring things out one step at a time rather than planning ahead for the long term. The rental industry was certainly not immune – landlords…

Why exactly do we need the Broker Public Portal? That’s a question I’ve been trying to answer every since it started. A few industry leaders offer their answer in the following video… One critical voice is missing….the consumer. I didn’t hear any of them explain…

I took a look at HomeASAP’s home page (a portal we covered with a founder interview back in 2016), and noticed different positioning than I previously remember. Their main value proposition: Home is closer than you think. Find it with a local expert. I actually…

CoreLogic is now offering consumer search sites powered by Homes.com to their MLS clients. I honestly don’t get understand why any MLS would spend time and money on a consumer search website. From CoreLogic, Homes.com, or any other provider. My core question is are MLS’ playing…

It’s no secret online travel Goliath Booking is in a fierce battle with Airbnb to win the minds, hearts, and pocketbooks of travelers around the globe. Booking is now claiming to have more inventory than Airbnb in the “alternative accommodations” market: 5 million compared to 4.85 million….

Zillow recently launched a new brand, Out East. It’s a portal for the Hamptons, joining Street Easy as a Zillow Group consumer brand on the East coast. It’s the result of their acquisition of Hamptons Real Estate Online (see here), which turned out to be…

FBS, the creators of the industry-leading Flexmls® System and Spark Platform, announced today the acquisition of Solid Earth’s Spring software platform along with the hiring of the Spring team. Combining the Spring® Portal, the Spark® API, and the Flexmls® System establishes a completely new, powerful platform that puts MLSs, brokers, and agents…

Simon Baker shared some of this thoughts on the future of online real estate at the Property Portal Watch conference (video link). Particularly for the startup founders reading, it’s worth a listen/watch.  

I spent some time looking at TruePad, a real estate portal only available in Chicago (Inman coverage here). “Find the best valued homes”. I like it. Unlike the majority of approaches I see (aka search for home in city X), that actually seems like a differentiated value…

As a skeptic that millennials need another portal, I said I’d withhold judgement until I saw the product. Yesterday, I had a few minutes to take a look at the new RealEstate.com. It seems the main differentiator is searching by cost. An “All-In Monthly Pricing”…