I started Notorious R.O.B. back in January of 2008. Back then, WordPress was more or less the state of the art in technology and I was extremely excited to venture into the world of blogging — something I had actually been doing for a while in political and comics/gaming space before 2008. After over 15 years, over 1,500 posts, thousands and thousands of comments, thousands of readers over the years (and all of them among the most informed, most curious, and best audience in real estate), various new efforts launched then abandoned, I think it’s time I try a newer content platform that seems ..read more

In my post about the likely impact of the commission lawsuits against NAR and four corporations, I mentioned that I had a conflict of interest when it came to the issue of real estate auctions because I had been working on an auction-related initiative for a while. I had kept the initiative relatively quiet because it’s early stages, but the court kind of forced my hand. Fairness dictates that I give you all at least an idea of what I’ve been doing so you can evaluate my opinions on Notorious ROB appropriately. Let me tell you about Decentre Property Exchange. I’ll try very hard not to make t ..read more

[NOTE: This is a VIP post, for subscribers only. However, given the importance of the topic, I’m going to make it open to all for a couple of weeks. Dumbass comments will be deleted since that’s one major benefit of VIP.] As promised, I thought I would recap and summarize my thoughts on what the impact of the various lawsuits against NAR, brokerages, Zillow, and MLSs likely would be. These date back as far as March of 2019, when I wrote the first post about the first class action lawsuit, Moehrl v. NAR, which has now been certified as a class action. Over the years, I’ve written about Moehrl ..read more

Judge Andrea Wood of the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois just granted class certification to the plaintiffs in Moehrl v. NAR, the mega lawsuit dealing with real estate commissions. This apparently sent shockwaves throughout the real estate industry, which puzzles me a bit. But then again, I’ve been following this lawsuit from the very beginning, and when the closely related Sitzer v. NAR (now Burnett v. NAR) was granted class action status, I wrote: In a way, this was the least surprising decision as I never thought these lawsuits would be anything other than class a ..read more

So last Friday, the Department of Justice formally filed an appeal of the trial court’s ruling in its fight against NAR with the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. This was as obvious and as predictable as the sun rising in the East. I wrote about that in a special public VIP post here. While I’ve been looking for the actual brief that the DOJ filed with the Court of Appeals, I don’t think it’s available to the public just yet. So in the meantime, I decided to have some fun with AI on this, while learning the capabilities of ChatGPT ..read more

I’ve been 100% heads-down on a project. But thought I’d take a moment to comment on the news that CoStar and News Corp are no longer in talks about Realtor.com. This is not a Q4 review; that still remains to be done, probably after all the reports as there have been very few worthy of note. But this news is interesting, especially when combined with other comments from CoStar during the earnings call ..read more

I am a 100% free market capitalist. In fact, I’m an AnCap (anarcho-capitalist) with strong Austrian economics leanings. So it is rare that I run across a business model that I detest. Yet, Adam Neumann’s new company, Flow, might have achieved that feat. From The Real Deal’s article Neumann reveals his vision for Flow renters to “feel ownership”: “If we are able to take this value-creating mechanisms and share with the residents a portion of the value, it’s going to make them feel ownership,” Neumann said. “And it’s not just ownership [like], ‘I feel like I am part of something.’ It’s, ‘I act ..read more

I’ve been thinking about this topic for a few years now, but felt motivated to write on it after reading Ryan Gorman’s Medium post announcing what he’s working on now with btcRE. Gorman as the former CEO of Coldwell Banker understands real estate better than most people, and yet… there was something I felt was missing in his analysis of the causes. Here’s what Gorman wrote: For those of limited means, an inability to fund minor repairs while they remain minor often leads to major health and safety risks and even foreclosure or eviction. Inefficient construction drives up energy bills and ad ..read more

[This is a VIP post, but given its importance and the fact that I’d love to hear from antitrust experts outside of the industry, I am opening it up to the public for a while. But hey, if you dig this kind of thing, consider subscribing to VIP.] A while back, when this case was first filed, I said with confidence that NAR would lose. I frankly thought, based on the Complaint and the Answer, that NAR might have the case thrown out. Boy, was I wrong. Yesterday came news that the court ruled in the case of NAR v. United States of America and in favor of NAR. I assume much rejoicing was had in NAR ..read more

I left out any predictions about the housing market in 2023 in my Seven Predictions post for a bunch of reasons. The most important being that it’s really kind of boring for people who are not super interested in the topic, which means just about everyone who isn’t a VIP subscriber. But now that 2023 is here, I spent a few minutes looking at some… ah… “alternative” analysis that happens to be my thesis for what will happen to housing market in 2023. I figured I would make that prediction here, early on, as it is January 5th as I write this, and see just how wrong I am at the end of the year ..read more