T3 Insight
Executive brief: articles and latest news
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.”
January 2022
December 2021
November 2021
October 2021
September 2021
August 2021
July 2021
June 2021
May 2021
April 2021
March 2021
February 2021
Have a question? Connect with our executive editor, Paul Hagey.
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Articles
Individual deep dive topics that T3 Sixty explores as part of the monthly executive brief
The articles listed here are an alternative view of the composite monthly brief. This offers an easy way to view recent, chronological, articles.
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January 2022
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With demand for talented workers greatly outweighing supply, it’s more important than ever to build and cultivate a company attractive to outside talent. This article shares five top strategies to do so.
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January 2022
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True growth happens behind the scenes and deep down. That’s the orienting philosophy around T3 Sixty and its growth-oriented program T3 Fellows. This article highlights the proven steps to establishing a strong foundation and one brokerage’s recent experience in shoring up its foundation.
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January 2022
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With the rise of national brokerages and extremely profitable real estate team business models, the pioneer of the modern real estate team, Keller Williams Realty, has launched two new initiatives to push the team model even further. This article dives into details of each.
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December 2021
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As MLSs look to expand market areas, they’re also looking to modernize their MLS systems with choice, integrations and additional features. As MLS leaders must constantly investigate their options, this article outlines the MLS system landscape and provides high-level insight on the most-used systems.
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December 2021
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As the pool of talented candidates has become smaller, internal recruiting, always important, has become even more vital. This article outlines some of the steps companies can use to implement a successful program.
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December 2021
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The 2022 Swanepoel Trends report analyzes the top trends shaping the residential real estate brokerage industry to give leaders the information and insight to successfully adapt and thrive in real estate’s next era. This article highlights several of its key chapters.
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November 2021
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Real estate brokerages and teams need different technology at different sizes. In fact, the right technology for smaller firms just will not fit as firms pass a certain agent count. This article highlights some of the technology considerations for brokerages and teams at different sizes.
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November 2021
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Most leaders know the value of strategic planning but may not yet have a reliable, proven system that enables them to focus on the key business areas that actually improve the bottom line. This article outlines a strategic planning process all brokers can employ to achieve tangible results.
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November 2021
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IBuying has gained many headlines, but the real estate financing revolution currently happening is much bigger as companies innovate to streamline the transaction with alternative financing services, something T3 Sixty has termed AltFin. Zillow Group’s move to walk away from purchasing homes is just part of this new approach’s evolution.
What We’re Reading
Notable industry articles curated with T3 Sixty’s perspective
Every month T3 gathers most important news across all companies, brands and regions and created an executive summary for quick and easy review.
- Article avaiable on Bloomberg
An analysis by Bloomberg News of over 100,000 property records shows that iBuyers Zillow, Opendoor and Offerpad sold approximately a fifth of the homes they sold in 2021 to institutional investors, who either flip the homes themselves or rent them out. This is another consequence of the rise and prevalence of iBuying – a streamlined access to homes standardized to sell for investors. As first-time and lower-income homebuyers already face many hurdles to homeownership, this is emerging as another one.
- Article avaiable on RealTrends
HomeSmart, the nation’s 10th largest brokerage, has filed paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to go public on the Nasdaq exchange under the ticker “HS.” The move would bring the number of brokerages part of public company among the nation’s 10 largest brokerages to seven. The financial resources that public markets provide companies is forcing more and more brokerage companies who want to compete for a spot on the leaderboard to consider the opportunity.
- Article avaiable on SP 200
T3 Sixty’s annual ranking of the residential real estate brokerage industry’s most powerful leaders, the Swanepoel Power 200 (SP 200), launched its ninth annual edition on January 11. The publication named Keller Williams Co-Founder and leader Gary Keller the most powerful leader in 2022, followed by eXp World Holdings Founder and CEO Glenn Sanford and Realogy President and CEO Ryan Schneider. The rankings spotlight the leaders who have the most influence in shaping the industry’s future in the next year. Visit sp200.com to see the full list.
- Article avaiable on New York Times
After a pandemic-induced migration away from New York City, the nation’s largest metro is seeing a sharp turnaround in real estate activity. The New York Times reports that more Manhattan apartments sold in the third quarter 2021 than in any quarter in the last 32 years. Other boroughs saw similar upticks in activity. The pandemic undeniably deeply impacted real estate consumer behavior and activity. This early data suggests that the Covid-induced flight to the suburbs may not be a longer-term trend.
- Article avaiable on HousingWire
Rocket Companies, the parent of major lender Rocket Mortgage and nascent brokerage Rocket Homes, acquired personal finance app Truebill in December for $1.275 billion. As Rocket Companies continue to build out a full suite of home services businesses, acquisitions like this one indicate the resources and scope the company can bring to bear on the effort. The company can use an app like Truebill across a vast array of its services, thus leveraging scale, introducing new services and spreading cost across several businesses.
- Article avaiable on Redfin
Spurred by sustained low inventory, the December median home price rose 14 percent year-over-year to $359,750, just $200 shy of July 2021’s all-time high of $359,950. With inflation and relatively low mortgage rates stoke homebuying activity, the market remains extremely hot. 2022 is starting off with the real estate bang.
- Article avaiable on Inman
REX Real Estate, which provides a residential real estate marketplace outside of the MLS system, sued NAR and Zillow in March 2021, alleging that Zillow’s application of a NAR rule that prevents the commingling of MLS listings and non-MLS listings disproportionately impacts REX listings and thus is anticompetitive. A judge recently dismissed a request from NAR and Zillow to dismiss the case. This lawsuit marks another ongoing suit that could change the way MLSs operate, in this instance, how their participants display IDX listings on their websites.
- Article avaiable on NAHB
Lumber prices nearly tripled in the four months into January, adding over $18,600 to the cost to build a new single-family home, according to the National Association of Home Builders. Pandemic-related supply chain issues, high tariffs on Canadian imports and wildfires have contributed to the rise. In a real estate market already ravaged by a dearth of inventory with home construction as an invaluable relief valve, this trend increases one of the primary limiting reagents to a balanced housing market in 2022. Read the chapter 2022 Swanepoel Trend Report chapter, “The Impact of New Construction.” You can access it digitally on T3 Intel.
- Article avaiable on GeekWire
Citing an interest in preventing racial bias, Redfin, realtor.com and Trulia all stopped displaying crime data on their portals in 2022. The nation’s most popular real estate portal, Zillow, had not displayed that data. By analyzing the sources of crime data, Redfin, one of the most outspoken members of the movement to remove neighborhood crime data from real estate websites, determined that they included too much potential bias to not reinforce inaccurate and biased real estate search results and information. This is an example of the industry stepping up to improve equity in the housing market, something T3 Sixty fully supports and applauds.
- Article avaiable on Inman
In unsealed recent legal filing, Realogy states that NAR’s rule that requires agents listing properties for sale in Realtor-affiliated MLSs provide a compensation offer to agents who bring a buyer be “rescinded.” Realogy separately clarified its position that it wants offers of cooperative compensation to be optional rather than mandatory. Realogy, along with NAR, RE/MAX, Keller Williams Realty and HomeServices of America, are defendants in several large class-action antitrust lawsuits that center on the issue of sellers being required to pay buyers’ agent commissions under the current NAR policy. The U.S. Department of Justice is also investigating this policy. NAR has amended its rules to provide public transparency for buyer agent commissions, but Realogy, the nation’s largest real estate enterprise, now is publicly asking NAR to drop the requirement. This is significant, given Realogy’s industry scope and power, and while Realogy exec M. Ryan Gorman made clear in an op-ed that this stance does not mean the company doesn’t think buyers agents are valuable and Realogy believes in cooperative compensation, this could push the industry into a new way consumers pay for real estate agent services.