Notorious R.O.B.

Hi everyone - I apologize first for not writing more. Some of it was just life and discovering vibe coding (more on that in the future I think) but most of it was that I am migrating this newsletter/blog off of Substack and onto a new platform. Lots of reasons why, but I think all of you will like the new experience better. Substack wasn’t always the greatest for certain things and I always hope to improve the experience for you all.

This is becoming a real problem... Another day, another lawsuit. Or as a reader who sent me news about this quipped, “Hagens Berman knows copy-paste.” It appears that Hagens Berman, the powerhouse law firm behind Sitzer, Moehrl, and of course, Taylor v. Zillow, has filed another class action lawsuit. This time, the target is a mortgage bank named Veterans United. Veterans United Home Loans is not a tech portal.

Extraordinary Attorney Woo, a kdrama about lawyers on Netflix. Definitely NOT on Zillow’s legal team. As expected, Zillow has moved to dismiss Taylor v. Zillow, what we’ve been calling the Zillow RESPA lawsuit. The brief is methodical, well-organized, and effective in many places. But it also reveals, through what it emphasizes and what it glosses over, exactly where Zillow thinks it’s vulnerable.

I’m working on a fairly significant series, so didn’t have time to publish this week. But I thought I would do a very quick hot take on this: On local autonomy, there’s broad support — 68% of all respondents favor more local policy discretion, and among MLS-only executives that jumps to 85%. That aligns pretty well with the sweeping MLS Handbook changes NAR pushed through late last year. But support for autonomy and comfort with autonomy are two different things.

One of my favorite people in real estate, Heather Harmon of GeekEstate, gave an amazing speech at MLS Reset last week. It was titled “Being Human in the Age of AI” and she did a great job at delivering her main point. Boiled down, it was a declaration that in the Age of AI, human connections reign supreme. At dinner the night before, we had a conversation about that when she said it was about a heart-to-heart connection that robots/AI simply could not duplicate. Of course I agree with her.

I will assume that you, the most informed audience in real estate, are aware of the ruling issued today by the court denying Compass’s motion for a preliminary injunction against Zillow over ZLAS. This is quite a big deal. In fact, in past posts and podcasts, I have said that how the PI comes out could/would be determinative for both Compass and Zillow. If Compass wins, then PLNs proliferate out of control, and Zillow has an existential crisis.

In my last missive, I said that Moltbot is the future of real estate… and that it should scare the living daylights out of you. I still stand by that claim. However, I spent the weekend messing around with Moltbot (now fully renamed Openclaw so I’ll call it that going forward) and have some further thoughts. TL;DR: Yes, this is the future, but it probably isn’t around the corner.

Okay, so… look, I know I have a reputation for being a bit of a downer. This newsletter doesn’t do a lot of sunshine and puppies and everything is wonderful stuff, because I am committed to the truth and reality above all things. Now, I have always said that I am actually quite whitepilled about the future, whether of the world, the country, or the industry. I like doomporn and all, but I do think all predictions of doom are quite suspect.

Getty Images, from Time.com: https://time.com/7358521/trump-accounts-for-kids-payments-guidelines-what-to-know/ One of the ideas being floated by the Trump Administration to buy votes for the midterm elections help middle-class Americans is the Trump Accounts. Trump Accounts are designed to give every eligible American child an early start in building wealth through long-term stock market investing.

Happy Monday, everybody. I hope this will be a quick post. A journalist emailed me asking what I thought was an obvious question: Now that Compass has closed the acquisition of Anywhere, and is likely to make its 3PM available across the entirety of the network, how do local independents and franchisee players in markets where they have dominant market share recruit agents?