Insight
Monthly digests, articles and press
Monthly Brief
T3 Sixty’s monthly executive brief providing analysis on the most important trends and developments as well as a quick digest of the most notable news in the industry.
The industry has so many stories, blogs, press releases and announcements each month that we all struggle to digest the information and distinguish between truly meaningful developments and hype or advertisement.
With T3 Insight, T3 Sixty analyzes developing trends, provides new brokerage industry best practices, and creates new perspectives on recent developments in technology, leadership, and organized real estate, in a monthly executive brief. It helps executives understand how the industry is changing in real time.
Each monthly executive brief also includes a composite of latest news and current articles under the title “What We’re Reading.”
March 2021
February 2021
January 2021
December 2020
November 2020
October 2020
September 2020
August 2020
Articles
Individual deep dive topics that T3 Sixty explores as part of the monthly digest
The articles listed here are an alternative view of the composite monthly brief. This offers an easy way to view recent, chronological, articles.
[
March 2021
]The technology agents need, and will use, heavily depends on how they work, their strengths, and how they get and close business. This is why T3 Sixty evaluates technology decisions for companies and agents through the lens of the four agent archetypes, covered in this article.
[
March 2021
]The Covid-19 pandemic has greatly shifted how brokerages and teams function, largely by shifting them into remote work environments. This change requires a careful attention to cultivating company culture, which becomes even more important when teams don’t physically interact on a regular basis.
[
March 2021
]Real estate technology is increasingly getting consolidated in the hands of fewer, larger players. This article highlights some of the details behind the trend and the implications.
[
February 2021
]This article covers the proven perspective and strategies for brokerages to recruit top producing agents. The successful formula involves a mix of understanding agent personas and archetypes, and then employing a strategy that leverages these for a particular market and brokerage.
[
February 2021
]The pandemic has had huge effects on all areas of real estate including, of course, organized real estate. T3 Sixty’s annual MLS and local Realtor association scorecards reveal how each type of organization fared.
[
February 2021
]The residential real estate brokerage industry is rapidly maturing, and nothing indicates this like the growing wave of companies within the ecosystem going public. The public markets provide resources and access to capital that increases the stakes and competitive firepower needed for firms to operate growing, sustainable businesses.
What We’re Reading
Notable industry articles curated with T3 Sixty’s perspective
T3 Sixty’s commentary on the stories we’re reading each month is included in the monthly brief. The most current stories are listed here.
- Reading for: March 2021
- From: Freddie Mac
- Commentary
Freddie Mac studied U.S. migration trends in the decade from 2010-2019 and found that the populations of the South and West are growing fastest in the U.S. Over that period, the metros of Austin, Texas, and Raleigh, North Carolina, grew the fastest and second fastest, respectively, followed by Orlando, Florida, Houston and San Antonio. The study also finds that these growths occurred predominantly in the suburbs of those metros versus the city centers, and that population growth doesn’t correlate directly with home price increases. Home price increases, Freddie Mac found, increase more based on per-capita income. As the nation undergoes a great reshuffling in response to the pandemic, and the increased work flexibility it provides, these trends appear likely to continue. House prices, warmer weather and suburban space will continue to pull buyers.
- Reading for: March 2021
- From: Opendoor
- Commentary
Opendoor, which pioneered iBuying when it launched in Phoenix in 2014, has introduced cash-backed offers to buyers in 13 of its markets, joining other iFunders who have jumped in with two feet into the alternative real estate financing world. Like iBuying, cash-backed offers adds a bit more risk for the company, but secures it valuable mortgage business, something it, many other brokerage companies, covet as key parts of their business models. In an inventory-starved market, as exist today in most areas of the U.S., cash-backed offers free of financing and other contingencies give buyers a leg up, and, Opendoor a seller, if the buyer also has a home to sell. These continued innovations around alternative financing in real estate are upping consumer competition for brokerages and lenders.
- Reading for: March 2021
- From: Redfin
- Commentary
In the interest of building out the extreme top-of-funnel in home sales, real estate companies have been building out rental strategies, with increasing force. Zillow Group has increased its focuse on this in recent years, and now Redfin dives into rentals with its pending acquisition of RentPath. CoStar Group, which just jumped into the residential real estate sales arena with its December acquisition of Homesnap, had tried to acquire RentPath in 2020, but the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, citing its anticompetitive outcome, sued to block it from going through. CoStar owns Apartments.com, which it acquired in 2014 for $585 million. As the residential real estate space deepens and broadens with consolidation and massive outside investment, all parts of the residential ecosystem will be increasingly mined. The dive into rentals by these companies is an example.