At its recent Q3 earnings call, Zillow leadership talked up the company’s recent app integration with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Essentially, if you type “Zillow” into a ChatGPT query, the chat will bring up the Zillow app, then a user can use the Zillow app and its functionality—home searches, connecting with agents, etc.—as if they had opened…
Mortgage application activity was mixed this week with overall purchase applications declining from last week, but a slight uptick in FHA loan applications and refinance applications still up significantly over last year indicates borrowers continue to look for ways to make homeownership more affordable. The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) reports that the market composite index—the…
Defendants in the largest homebuying commission case have filed a motion to strike or delay the plaintiffs’ class certification motion, arguing that a binding federal injunction from the Burnett case invalidates roughly 79% of the proposed class—buyers who also sold homes during a particular time period. The defendants, Anywhere, REMAX and Keller Williams, previously settled…
When Zillow announced its new rules restricting certain private listings, one MLS was quickly thrown into the spotlight—Midwest Real Estate Data, or MRED, in the Chicago region. That’s because for almost a decade, MRED has hosted an internal private listing service—properties shared within the MLS, but not necessarily to anyone else. While Zillow didn’t immediately…
In a relatively short time, the power dynamics in residential real estate have shifted dramatically. The National Association of Realtors® (NAR) sits alongside portal giant Zillow on one side, and on the other is New York-based venture capital-backed Compass, a new behemoth that has consolidated a huge brokerage empire and appears ready to use its…
In its first financial report since being acquired by Compass in September, Anywhere Real Estate, in a Nov. 4 Q3 earnings call, showed $1.6 billion in revenue—a 6% increase from the previous year. The company said it is focused on achieving $100 million in cost savings for 2025 and has already identified all necessary savings.…
The acting inspector general of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), aka the organization’s “internal watchdog” who polices waste, fraud and abuse, has been removed from his position, as reported by Reuters. The FHFA website now designates the position as vacant. Joe Allen is the latest in a chain of several other watchdogs who have…
The COURT REPORT is RISMedia’s weekly look at current and upcoming lawsuits, investigations and other legal developments around real estate. Compass’s request for Zillow/Redfin documents currently denied This past week saw new developments in the ongoing litigation between Compass and Zillow, the crux of which is Compass’s objections to Zillow’s new rules that remove listings…
Ahead of the Nov. 18 hearing over its legal challenge to Zillow’s new listing rules, Compass filed a supplemental brief against the portal, accusing it of weaponizing its dominance in the home portal market to crush competition and force home sellers and agents to list properties on its platform first. In the pre-hearing brief submitted…
They’re the opposite ends of the home-buying spectrum. One phrase lights up a potential owner’s face, while the other forces a frown. The former is a no-brainer for you, the agent, while the latter can test your ability to keep a client in check. It’s plug-and-play versus quasi-fixer-upper. It is easy to accentuate the positives,…
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