T3 Insight

Keller Williams innovates on teams, foundations for growth + attracting top talent

Articles in this Edition

In this edition of T3 Insight, T3 Sixty's latest monthly analysis of the residential real estate brokerage industry includes articles on Keller Williams innovates on teams, foundations for growth + attracting top talent. Take a deep dive below.

Released January 20, 2022

Keller Williams Realty expands on expansion teams

by: Paul Hagey

Establishing the foundation for a fast-growing brokerage or team

by: Dean Cottrill

How to attract top talent

by: Kelly White

What We're Reading

In addition to the articles, here are a few items we are reading from across the internet.

Institutional investors bought a fifth of iBuyer-sold homes in 2021

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.

Bloomberg

HomeSmart files for IPO

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.

RealTrends

Gary Keller named most powerful real estate leader in 2022

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.

SP 200

New York City real estate makes a comeback

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.

New York Times

Rocket acquires finance app Truebill for $1.3B

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.

HousingWire

Home prices approach all-time high

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.

Redfin

REX Real Estate’s antitrust claims continue against NAR and Zillow

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.

Inman

Lumber prices rise again

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.

NAHB

Prominent portals choose to drop neighborhood crime data

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.

GeekWire

Realogy calls for NAR to drop requirement of buyer agent commission offer in MLS

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.

Inman