Odds and ends

I’ve been busier than usual the past week or so. On the road, on the phone, up in the air and down in the weeds. I haven’t had much time to write, so offer you just a few crumbs of thought dug up from the seat-back pocket in front of me…

Brad Inman wrote a really insightful piece about Zillow last week. He makes the case that real estate disruption is near. I thought we were approaching this point a couple years ago, but things move slowly. The frog doesn’t feel anything until the end, though, right?

…

Let’s look on the bright side: airport food has become better in the past 10 years. It really has.

…

I spent a couple hours the other day with a group of agents who could give a rat’s ass about internet leads, their MLS, or the pocket listings debate people who aren’t them are having right now. It was refreshing. There are more of them than you think.

…

I will never, ever forgive United Airlines for ruining Rhapsody in Blue.

…

Internet leads are mostly buyer leads. The more valuable seller leads are still largely hardwired into the personal networks of established listing agents. That will never change completely, but it’s odd that we haven’t seen more activity here. Trulia just released a Seller Ads product, which is cool, but is rooted in the same “fill out this form and get a home value estimate from an agent” gambit HouseValues played 15 years ago. There will be a new way, soon.

…

The older I get, the more quickly I become frustrated with people that mistake talking for communicating.

…

I was at the AEI Institute meeting last week, the NAR event for association executives. The buzzword there was “relevance.” I think this is probably a bad sign.

…

Most brokers should think mobile web for consumers, native apps for agents. I am pretty strong in this belief.

…

Move’s new Doorsteps Swipe app is cool. If you want to know how to build beautiful products, look really closely at what Michelle Serro does.

…

If you’re at a startup with something to offer real estate brokers or agents, you need to apply for the Realogy FWD event, where you get to pitch your company to executives representing 26% of the entire U.S. real estate market. There was a time in my life when I would have walked to New Jersey for such an opportunity.

…

“What to Expect When You’re Expecting” is the best selling pregnancy book of all time. Why hasn’t a real estate company done “What to Expect When You’re Transacting”? With all the buzz about “content marketing” these days, there is precious little real estate content that actually helps people make decisions. There’s opportunity there.

Enjoy the rest of the week.

[Disclosure: Realogy and Move, Inc. are 1000WATT clients.]