Homeownership details, the T3 Brokerage Tech Profile + exploring new MLS models
In addition to the articles, here are a few items we are reading from across the internet.
Southwest Florida-based brokerage John R. Wood Properties, the nation’s 57th largest brokerage by 2021 sales volume, has become an affiliate of Christie's International Real Estate. Since At World Properties – the parent company of @properties – acquired the Christie’s brand in December 2021, the company has welcomed notable new brokerage affiliates including Christie’s International Real Estate Sereno in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Tulsa, Oklahoma-based Coldwell Banker Select, the nation’s 14th largest Coldwell Banker affiliate by 2021 sales volume, has acquired Wichita Kansas- based Coldwell Banker Plaza Real Estate. Combined, the two firms’ sales would break the firm into one of the 10 largest U.S. affiliates of the brand, according to the 2022 Real Estate Almanac.
A new class-action lawsuit filed in federal court accuses Zillow of illegally monitoring visitor actions on its website. The plaintiffs accuse Zillow of using code to record user activity, alleging that that violates a federal wiretapping law.
After losing $101 million in the second quarter 2022, Compass continued its cost-cutting by parting ways with its chief technology officer Joseph Sirosh, a highly touted addition to the team when he came to the company in late 2018. Compass has spent a reported $900 million on its technology platform. The company, which became the largest brokerage in America in 2022, is reeling at the moment as it looks to solidify its operations and work toward profitability.
Reali, a real estate alternative finance startup, which provided buyers with cash-backed offers and offered sellers who were also buying a home a trade-in financing service, will shutter its doors by the end of the year. The company raised a $100 million Series B funding round in August 2021. Companies emerged on the scene in recent years with tons of funding and tried new things, but, ultimately, some must fall by the wayside as competition heats up in the real estate alternative finance category.
As part of a class-action lawsuit challenging the industry’s commission structure, the Nosalek case, filed in December 2020 that has garnered less attention than the Moehrl and Sizter/Burnett cases, Anywhere Real Estate is fighting the request for it turn over all documents nationally it has related to the NAR’s “buyer broker commission rule.” A Massachusetts federal court will hear oral arguments September 26 to decide the issue. The suit, which names broker-owned MLSPIN, RE/MAX, Keller Williams and HomeServices of America and Anywhere Real Estate, as defendants, continues to run as the other suits do, too. Many in the industry are keeping a watchful eye on these suits, along with the ongoing US Department of Justice review of NAR commission and other policies.
In an analysis of its own MLS data, Bright MLS, the second largest MLS in the nation, found that properties marketed and sold through the MLS fetched a median premium of 13.0 percent compared with homes that sold without the MLS. In the study, which measured homes sold in MLS’s Mid-Atlantic footprint between January 2019 through March 2022, Bright MLS found that 83.4 percent of all sales in its market came through the MLS. The study also included an analysis of office exclusives. Of the 5,599 listings marketed as office exclusives between April 2021 and December 2021, 63.0 percent eventually were sold on the MLS. In addition, selling on the MLS, the study found, brought a 22.2 percent premium compared to office exclusives not sold on the MLS.
In the four weeks through August 28, the average home in the U.S. sold below its list price at 99.8 percent of list. This ends a 16-month run of the average home selling over list price. This metric provided by Redfin provides another example that spotlights a changing market.
In a video interview, U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Marcia Fudge said that redlining persists in America, especially in lower-income communities where lending is more constricted and appraisals come in lower. The Black homeownership rate is as low as it has been in five decades. The redlining that helped create this scenario continues to impact these communities today. The industry has made an increased investment in diversity, equity, and inclusion but clearly more needs to be done.
The consumer price index revealed that prices increased 8.3 percent in August from the previous 12 months, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This jump sustains the largest year-over-year increase in the last two decades for prices. Pricing has become a challenge for agents across the nation; in many markets price reductions are common. In a shifting market like this, brokerages and agents should carefully forecast their local markets with the best data available to best serve their buyer and seller clients.
Enabling Intelligent Change.
