Tag Archives: mobile real estate

Seven Predictions for 2013: The AKUS Experience

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The Greatest Band in American Music

Once again, it is time for the world famous (in my own mind at least) annual tradition of making predictions for the coming year that are Guaranteed to be Wrong, or Your Money Back! This year, I thought I would pay tribute to the greatest musical act still working today: Alison Krauss and Union Station. If you haven’t experienced AKUS, please click on the embedded videos; you will become a fan. If you are not a fan, you should be. “But I hate country music” is no excuse when it comes to the awesomeness that is the Hall of Fame lineup of Alison Krauss, Jerry Douglas, Dan Tyminski, Ron Block, and Dan Bales.

My 2012 Predictions turned out to be mostly wrong, which is great news, since many of them were dire indeed. Here’s to hoping that my 2013 predictions will perform about the same.

Let’s get into it.

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Grading Time! Reviewing My 2012 Predictions

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The first Triple Crown Winner in 45 years… and he bat .330

Welcome to another edition of an annual tradition, in which I go back and grade myself on my predictions made at the start of this year. My track record so far:

  • 2010 Predictions: 6 of 10 (.600)
  • 2011 Predictions: 4.5 of 7 (.642)

As was the case last year, I’m hoping to be wrong more often than not, because my 2012 Predictions, written on January 2, 2012, were kind of on the doomy and gloomy side of things. Let’s take a look, shall we?

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When Life Hands You Citrons, Make Citronade: In Which I Differ With Smart Analysts

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A cool refreshing drink…

I’ve gotten more than one request from readers to discuss the brutal analysis report on Zillow by Citron Research. I didn’t think I’d have much to add to a stock analyst’s report that tends to be heavy on financial metrics and such, but it turns out that the Citron Research report is indeed worth reading. And opining about. Seeing as how I don’t own any Zillow, haven’t shorted Zillow — or anyone else, and no one is paying me for this post… you may value my thoughts at what you’ve paid for them.

Fundamentally, Citron’s report isn’t an attack solely on Zillow; it’s an attack on the entire business model of Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com, and everyone else in the “aggregation” business:

We can all agree the internet is not a new technology. Internet-generated leads to realtors have been getting sold for close to 15 years. Zillow itself has been around for seven years. If, after seven years and hundreds of millions of dollars of Wall Street’s money, all it has generated is a $100 million revenue run rate, why should the future be exponentially better than the past—especially with a plethora of well capitalized competition? That Zillow has captured a whopping 1% of real estate ad spend after seven years, definitively reveals a history of rejection of their model by their core market. This is not a broken business model; it is a business model that has never worked. (Emphasis in original.)

I think that’s going a step too far, and ignores some of the real simmering fault lines bubbling under the surface in the real estate industry. Since Citron isn’t new to covering the real estate technology business (“yes, we are veterans in this space”), I would have thought they’d be more aware of those fault lines. If they’re not, I invite them to subscribe to this here blog, since I often discuss them.

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In Which I Solve the Syndication Problem, Once And For All

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Solved! Once And For All...?

Let’s suppose that you’re some graduate student at Beijing University and you want to write a paper on the major issues confronting the American real estate industry. So you start googling and going to blogs (like this one maybe) and open groups on Facebook and whatnot to find out what critical issues are top of mind for brokers and agents in the United States. Given that you hail from a country that doesn’t allow private ownership in land, you figure that the Americans are way ahead of you in terms of dealing with important issues that might come up as China liberalizes its real estate policies. Plus, you’ve read the news, you keep up with what’s going on.

Would the major issues be the precarious state of housing finance? Maybe American real estate professionals are all about Qualified Residential Mortgage rule. Maybe it’s dealing with the advances in Big Data. Maybe it’s trying to figure out how advances in artificial intelligence would impact things.

No, actually, our Chinese graduate student would likely find that the #1 issue on the minds of American brokers and agents is syndication. Quite literally, hundreds of thousands of brokers, agents, consultants, MLS executives, Association leaders, and vendors are talking about, debating, and getting riled up about basic questions such as, “Should I send my listings to Zillow?”

I believe it is well past high time to get over syndication. It simply is not and should not be an issue of import. There are more important things to discuss as an industry.

Therefore, in the spirit of public service, I will draw together the many strands of thinking on syndication and show that the problem has been solved. Most of this appears elsewhere on this blog or in public speeches I’ve given, but let’s see if we can’t put it all in one place for easy consumption.

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Some Thoughts on Zillow’s 2011 Results and Howard Hanna (In Which I Declare Peace In Our Time)

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That tagline is more meaningful today

Was it just yesterday when I was speculating on Zillow’s recent hiring of Bob Bemis? Why, yes, yes it was. How things change in 24 hours when you live in interesting times. [Editor's Note: Obviously, you started writing this on the 15th and didn't finish? Nice managing the deadline, Rob.]

Today, Zillow released their Q4/2011 results, which shows its full year results as well. The numbers are… shall we say… ah… scintillating given the state of the real estate market today? And there’s just so much here that points to the future of real estate, where the battle lines will be drawn, and what the next set of tensions will be.

I warn you now. This will be long and filled with the kind of “paranoid speculation” that makes most insiders guffaw with disbelief… until it happens.

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Seven Predictions for 2012, The Techno Edition

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Continuing the tradition that started when the earth was young (or last year… depending on your definition of “time”), I’d like to present this year’s version of “Predictions Guaranteed to be Wrong, Or Your Money Back”! As we saw in the report card post, last year, I went 4.5 for 7 in predictions. I hope to bat lower for this year’s predictions. Of course, I can guarantee 0 for 7 by making ridiculous predictions, like “The Jets will win the SuperBowl”.

Without further ado, the predictions for 2012…

 

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Sucking the Wind out of Sails: Why Mobile Won’t Matter in 2010

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Image: bluefin_102 ~ Mike Forsman via Flickr.com

Joel Burslem, whose intelligence is matched only by his ability to eat samgyupsal and drink soju with native Korean boys, opines on 1000watt blog that 2010 will be the year of mobile:

In my presentation yesterday at Virtual RE Bar Camp I made the case that 2010 will be the year the mobile finally matters in real estate marketing. But its not mobile by itself that matters…

2010 is the year the mobile web really begins to matter. In 2009, the mobile web grew 110 percent according to Quantcast. And just as advertising dollars flowed from print to the web, soon I suspect, they will flow from the desktop to the handset.

As much as it pains me to disagree with Joel, in this case, I’d like to offer two points to temper his (and others’) enthusiasm.

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