Where Real Estate Gets Its Dirt

Katrina Romatowski: Rethinking Homeownership for the Next Generation with reSpace

The Listing Bits Podcast is now available on your favorite podcast player!

Overview

Greg Robertson sits down with Katrina Romatowski, founder and CEO of reSpace, to discuss a new approach to housing affordability through co-homeownership. Drawing on nearly three decades in real estate, development, and housing advocacy, Katrina explains how reSpace redesigns homes into private suites with shared common spaces and enables buyers to purchase fractional ownership interests. The conversation explores affordability, homeownership as a wealth-building tool, aging-in-place design, MLS challenges, and the growing need for alternative housing models. 

Key Takeaways

  • Katrina grew up throughout the Pacific Northwest, worked in construction from a young age, and built a career spanning real estate sales, development, and brokerage. 
  • Her real estate company was founded as a social purpose corporation, leading to the creation of a nonprofit focused on housing and mentorship for people exiting incarceration and recovery programs. 
  • The idea for reSpace emerged after selling a small infill home for nearly $1 million and questioning who could realistically afford it. 
  • Inspiration came from fractional ownership models such as Picasso, but Katrina wanted to apply the concept to primary housing rather than luxury vacation homes. 
  • reSpace creates homes with private suites that include ensuite bathrooms, closets, workspace areas, and personal amenities, paired with shared kitchens and living spaces. 
  • Buyers purchase an ownership interest in the property, allowing them to live in high-cost neighborhoods at a price point closer to renting an apartment. 
  • The model is designed to help first-time buyers, retirees, siblings, friends, and other groups gain access to ownership while maintaining independence. 
  • Katrina argues that homeownership remains one of the most important pathways to building middle-class wealth and that affordability challenges are increasingly shutting people out of that opportunity. 
  • A major hurdle for reSpace has been gaining MLS support for fractional ownership listings, despite existing standards that support partial-interest ownership categories. 
  • Current projects include The Grove in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood and a historic mansion redevelopment in Leschi, with plans to expand through technology and partnerships. 

Links

reSpace

Snapshot by reSpace

Katrina Romatowski on LinkedIn

Links

Sponsors

Aligned Showings — MLS-owned showing software built to simplify scheduling, improve communication, and keep MLS data where it belongs.

Giant Steps Job Board – Built for organized real estate and PropTech, not generic tech bros and recruiters who don’t know what an MLS is.

Production and editing services by:

Sunbound Studios

What Happens When Zillow Stops Playing Nice?

The Industry Relations Podcast is now available on your favorite podcast player!

Overview

Greg revisits his “Poking the Bear” article and argues that the industry may be underestimating what happens if Zillow is pushed into becoming a direct competitor. Using a Nike-versus-Hyatt branding analogy, Greg and Rob debate whether a Zillow brokerage, franchise, or even MLS would be a nightmare scenario or simply the next stage of competition.

The conversation expands into a broader discussion about MLS infrastructure, IDX, cooperation, listing distribution, and whether the industry is protecting outdated systems at the expense of innovation. Rob argues that the industry’s real asset is cooperation, not marketing, while Greg contends that blowing up existing systems creates more risk than reward. The result is one of the podcast’s most philosophical debates about competition, infrastructure, and the future of real estate.

Key Takeaways

  • Greg explains the premise of his “Poking the Bear” article and why he believes the industry should be careful about forcing Zillow into a more direct competitive role.
  • The hosts discuss whether a national Zillow brokerage or franchise would be a serious threat to existing brokerages and brands.
  • Rob argues that direct competition is preferable to the current situation because brokerages know how to compete against other brokerages, franchises, and MLSs.
  • Greg questions whether Compass’s evolution into a larger conglomerate could create opportunities for boutique and independent brokerage models.
  • The discussion shifts to MLS infrastructure, with Rob arguing that cooperation—not marketing—is the true value proposition of the MLS system.
  • Rob and Greg debate whether IDX remains relevant in its current form and whether it should become an opt-in rather than opt-out system.
  • The hosts explore the difference between cooperation data and marketing data, and whether those functions should be separated moving forward.
  • Greg argues that unrestricted competition could create unintended consequences, while Rob maintains that open competition ultimately benefits consumers.
  • The episode closes with a larger conversation about preserving what makes the U.S. real estate market unique while adapting to new competitive realities.

Links

Greg’s Article

Connect with Rob and Greg

Rob’s Website 

Greg’s Website 

Watch us on YouTube

Our Sponsors:

Cotality 

Notorious VIP

The Giant Steps Job Board 

Production and Editing Services by Sunbound Studios

June 7th

This mock up was not approved by Zillow and meant for entertainment purposes only.

Poking the Bear

A thought experiment about unintended consequences.

I don’t typically write longer posts but I recently heard someone on a recent podcast (only tangential related) describe a branding exercise that stuck with me. Imagine Nike opened a hotel. You can picture it instantly, can’t you? World-class gym. Sleek minimalist rooms. Maybe LeBron in the lobby. You’d book it tomorrow.

Now imagine Hyatt launched a running shoe. What would that look like?

Exactly. It would look like nothing. Some brands carry a gravity that extends naturally into adjacent spaces, and some don’t. The exercise isn’t about who’s better. It’s about which direction the brand energy flows.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot as I watch Compass, a handful of MLSs, and the broader industry slowly, maybe accidentally, push Zillow toward becoming something it has deliberately avoided for twenty years: a full-service brokerage.

The people doing the pushing should be very careful about what they’re wishing for.

The Corner

In January, Compass closed its acquisition of Anywhere Real Estate, becoming a conglomerate with 500,000+ affiliated agents across Compass, Coldwell Banker, Century 21, Sotheby’s, and ERA. In February, Compass and Redfin/Rocket announced an exclusive Coming Soon partnership, routing Compass listings to Redfin before they hit the MLS. In March, Zillow launched Preview as a response.

Then came the MRED situation. Nine Compass Private Exclusive listings triggered a feed suspension that removed 43,000 listings from Zillow overnight. Within hours, Compass launched a coordinated marketing blitz across its owned brands while competitors’ listings were invisible on Zillow. A federal judge ordered restoration in 48 hours. Zillow filed an antitrust complaint alleging a Compass regional VP sits on MRED’s board. The same board that pulled the trigger.

Private listings withheld from the MLS. An exclusive portal deal that bypasses the MLS. An MLS governance action that punishes Zillow while Compass capitalizes. A brokerage executive on the board that enforced it.

If you were in Zillow’s Seattle headquarters watching this, would you conclude the system is going to treat you fairly? Or would you start thinking about what your company looks like if it didn’t need any of them?

The Nike Hotel

Here’s the thing about Zillow becoming a full-service brokerage: you can picture it.

Two hundred million monthly visitors. A brand synonymous with real estate search. Zillow Home Loans already in place. A Premier Agent network that already connects buyers with agents, agents who could, with a different employment agreement, become Zillow agents.

You search on Zillow. You find a home. You click “Schedule a Tour” and a salaried Zillow agent shows you the property. You get pre-approved through Zillow Home Loans on the drive over. You make an offer through the app. The whole thing feels like booking a flight.

That’s the Nike Hotel.

Now imagine Compass launching a consumer portal to compete with Zillow. Five hundred thousand agents, sure, but what’s the consumer brand? What’s the reason a buyer in Tampa opens the Compass app instead of Zillow? That’s the Hyatt running shoe.

Zillow has resisted this model because Wall Street rewards asset-light platforms, not brokerages. But Redfin proved you can be both. And Redfin’s hybrid approach, salaried agents in key metros with partner agents handling the rest, showed you don’t have to employ everyone to control the transaction. If Zillow’s current model is being slowly strangled by private listings, feed disputes, and exclusive pre-market deals, the multiples question becomes academic. You can’t monetize traffic you can’t serve.

Meanwhile, at Compass

While Compass plays chess with Zillow, something is happening inside its own house.

Compass was built on exclusivity. Robert Reffkin recruited the industry’s top producers with a simple pitch: you are the best, and you deserve a platform that treats you that way. Reffkin’s personal cell phone number was part of the deal. It was the velvet rope.

Then they bought Anywhere. Now those same elite agents share a corporate parent with Century 21 and ERA. The holiday party got a lot more crowded. No top-producing Compass agent wants to make small talk with the Century 21 agent from the strip mall office, but here they are, under the same roof.  Ew.

And the technology edge? Compass positioned itself as a technology-enabled brokerage, and for a while that mattered. But everything they built before 2026 now feels like last season’s phone. AI has leveled the playing field so completely that every brokerage, every MLS, every single agent has access to tools that match or exceed what Compass spent hundreds of millions developing. The tech moat is gone.

So the cachet is diluted and the tech advantage has evaporated. I’m hearing that some of these high-end agents are looking at Side and other alternatives, trying to recapture the exclusivity that Compass used to represent. Compass bought scale and may be losing the thing that made the scale worth buying.

The Unintended Consequence

Rob and I talk a lot about 2nd and 3rd order consequences on our Industry Relations podcast. Here’s the scenario that should keep Compass up at night.

They’ve spent the last year building private listing infrastructure, cutting exclusive portal deals, and creating an environment where Zillow’s access to inventory is increasingly uncertain. They’ve poked the bear.

And the bear has $2 billion in cash, 200 million monthly visitors, a mortgage company, an AI platform, and a brand that every American consumer already trusts for real estate. If Zillow decides the only way to guarantee access to inventory is to control the inventory, they have every asset they need to do it. And unlike Compass, they start with the consumer, not the agent. That’s the high ground.

What would happen to Compass’ stock price when the Wall Street Journal reports, “Zillow Launches Mega-Brokerage”?  

The industry has spent years worrying about Zillow’s power as a portal. They should be much more worried about Zillow’s potential as a brokerage. A portal can be starved of data. A brokerage that controls its own listings can’t be.

Every feed suspension, every exclusive pre-market deal, every private listing that routes around the open market is a data point in a Zillow board presentation titled “Why We Need to Control Our Own Inventory.”

Can you picture what a Zillow brokerage looks like?

I can. And it looks like a Nike Hotel.



ICE [Sponsor]

The ICE MLS Conference: what we heard, what we learned, and what’s next

On May 4-5, ICE brought the MLS community together in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. for two days of sessions, hands-on training and candid industry conversation.

Here’s what stood out.

Some assumptions got challenged

I presented a session called What If We’re Wrong? Five Assumptions that Could Break the MLS and it didn’t offer tidy answers. It offered better questions. 

I also moderated the Ask Me Anything session with ICE leadership. An open, off-the-cuff discussion where attendees could ask anything about product vision, upcoming enhancements and what’s next for the platform. 

Amy Gorce and Lucie Fortier kept that energy going during their fireside chat about the evolving role of the MLS, where data accessibility is headed and what organizations need to be thinking about right now. 

Paragon Connect: the real-world view

We spent a lot of time at the conference deep diving into Paragon Connect, specifically what it looks like to evaluate, transition, train and get your membership to use it.

Stacy Herbel, Briana Therrien and Shaina Kelly shared what a successful transition looks like from the inside, including back-end evaluation, change management, cross-MLS documentation and training rollout. Their message was simple: the MLSs that do the preparation work don’t regret it.

Sara Fogg, Brian Alford and Denise Ware took a more hands-on approach, detailing admin tips, field rules and custom reporting. The kind of session where notetaking was essential.

There was also a Train-the-Trainer track covering property search, the Collaboration Center, LIM and EasyCMA. Attendees who completed both sessions walked away with a Train-the-Trainer certificate.

ICE also shared what’s coming on their roadmap, plus a look at features from 2025 that a lot of users still haven’t discovered.

The energy in the room was hard to put into words, so we’ll let the video do the talking.

Watch the ICE MLS Customer Conference recap — you might spot yourself.

What the numbers say

The post-conference survey results saw 82% of respondents rating the conference “Extremely Satisfied” and 98% giving it a 4 or 5 out of 5. Every single respondent said they’re likely or very likely to attend next year. 

The survey comments said it best:

“This was the best conference I have attended in 15 years.”

“The quality of the content and agenda scheduling at the conference was excellent.”

“I have been excited to partner with ICE since the start, but this conference got us even more excited to see what the future holds.”

If Paragon Connect has been sitting on your to-do list, this conference was a good reminder that it’s worth moving up.

Learn more about Paragon Connect

Many thanks to ICE for sponsoring Vendor Alley this month.


Fixing Home Affordability One Room at a Time With Atticus LeBlanc of PadSplit

The Listing Bits Podcast is now available on your favorite podcast player!

Overview

Greg Robertson sits down with Atticus LeBlanc, founder and CEO of PadSplit, to discuss the affordable housing crisis and how room-by-room rentals can create housing opportunities for people who are priced out of traditional apartments. Atticus shares his journey from commercial real estate broker to housing entrepreneur, the origins of PadSplit during the Great Financial Crisis, and how the company has grown from a single prototype house to more than 33,000 beds nationwide.

The conversation explores shared housing, affordability challenges, real estate investing, and the role technology can play in expanding access to housing. Key Takeaways Atticus grew up in New Orleans, studied Architecture and Urban Studies at Yale University, and credits competitive swimming with teaching resilience and persistence. After entering commercial real estate during the early stages of the housing crash, he discovered an overlooked opportunity in room-by-room housing. A chance encounter with tenants Mitch and Otis led to his first rooming-house experiment, revealing strong demand from renters who couldn’t qualify for traditional apartments.

PadSplit was founded in 2017 to provide the operational and technology infrastructure needed to make shared housing scalable. The platform functions similarly to Airbnb, connecting hosts with renters while handling marketing, screening, payments, move-ins, and support. Many PadSplit residents are workers earning modest incomes who are unable to meet traditional apartment qualification requirements despite having stable employment. The company has grown from 82 beds in 2018 to roughly 33,000 beds today. Shared housing can help homeowners offset mortgage costs and create pathways toward real estate investing.

Atticus argues that local market knowledge often matters more than national data when identifying successful housing opportunities. The average PadSplit resident stays about nine and a half months, though many remain for years due to the affordability and stability the model provides.

Links

Padsplit

Atticus on LinkedIn

Sponsors

Aligned Showings — MLS-owned showing software built to simplify scheduling, improve communication, and keep MLS data where it belongs.

Giant Steps Job Board – Built for organized real estate and PropTech, not generic tech bros and recruiters who don’t know what an MLS is.

Production and editing services by: Sunbound Studios

There and back again, the IDX debate continues.

The Industry Relations Podcast is now available on your favorite podcast player!

Overview

Rob and Greg dive into a major discussion about IDX, MLS rules, private listings, and whether MLSs should still control listing distribution in 2026. Using a Twitter exchange with Michael Wurzer as the jumping-off point, they unpack the history of VOWs, syndication, Zillow’s rise, and whether the industry is still operating on outdated internet-era assumptions.

Key Takeaways

  • Michael Wurzer’s IDX question leads into a larger conversation about MLS governance.
  • Greg argues MLSs could handle private listings with simple status changes.
  • Rob argues IDX was never intended to become the industry’s primary listing distribution system.
  • The history of ListHub, Realtor.com, Zillow, and syndication reshaping the industry is revisited.
  • Rob proposes MLSs focus only on cooperation while brokers control distribution themselves.
  • Greg pushes back on whether replacing IDX is actually simpler than adapting it.

Links

X Thread

Connect with Rob and Greg

Rob’s Website 

Greg’s Website 

Watch us on YouTube

Our Sponsors:

Cotality 

Notorious VIP

The Giant Steps Job Board 

Production and Editing Services by Sunbound Studios

FML

9 Listings

MRED cuts off listing feeds to Zillow

“Zillow has effectively decided not to display 99.98% of MRED’s listings on its platforms because it, in its own judgment, disagrees with the lawful marketing strategy associated with the remaining 0.02% of listings.”

Let that sink in. Nine listings.

That’s MRED’s line, and it’s a good one. But it works in both directions.

Zillow pulled 43,000 Chicago listings off its platform because it refused to display nine Compass Private Exclusives. That’s the hill Zillow chose. And honestly? I think it’s the right hill. Because if Zillow caves on nine today, it’s not nine tomorrow. It’s ninety. Then nine hundred. Then every listing that got pocket-listed first gets laundered through an MLS and shows up on Zillow like nothing happened. Zillow’s whole pitch to consumers is “see everything.” The moment they start making exceptions for Compass’s private listing machine, that pitch is dead.

But here’s the thing. Those nine listings? They’re not even in Chicago. They’re Compass Private Exclusives in California, Florida, and Georgia. MRED, a regional MLS in Lisle, Illinois, cut off 43,000 Chicagoland listings to force Zillow to display nine homes thousands of miles away. That’s also a hill to die on. And it’s a weird one.

MRED changed its own rules last October, after Compass CEO Robert Reffkin personally emailed MLSs across the country asking them to cut Zillow’s feeds. Then MRED went national with Compass as its first partner, with Compass subsidizing the first 100,000 agents. Then MRED demanded Zillow display Compass listings nationwide or lose everything. And when Zillow said no, MRED pulled the trigger.

That’s not rules enforcement. That’s a favor.

Now, Zillow isn’t doing this out of the goodness of its heart. Their “transparency” standards happen to protect a lead-gen business that made them $1.8 billion last year. They know that. I know that. But being self-interested and being right aren’t mutually exclusive.

The judge seemed to agree… sort of. The TRO put MRED’s listings back on Zillow but told Zillow it can’t exclude MRED listings either. Both sides claimed victory. Which means nobody actually won.

And that brings us back to nine.

Nine listings that Compass didn’t want on the open market. Nine listings that Zillow refused to display. Nine listings that MRED was willing to nuke 43,000 Chicago listings over. Nine listings that a federal judge had to sort out on a Friday afternoon.

Compass calls this “seller’s choice.” But when 72% of your private listings double-end and 68% of sellers say their agent never explained what private even means, that’s not choice. That’s a sales pitch wrapped in a permission slip.

I don’t know how this ends. But I know the number everyone will remember.

Nine.

Cotality [Sponsor]

Trust, But Verify: What Homebuyers Really Want from AI

According to Cotality’s recent “Trust, but verify” report, 75% of homebuyers already assume AI is working behind the scenes—whether they’re browsing listings or applying for a mortgage. But just because it’s there doesn’t mean they fully trust it.

There’s actually a growing gap between using AI and trusting it. In the U.S., confidence in AI to help find a home has taken a sharp dip. Instead, buyers are increasingly turning back to human experts to double-check those make-or-break decisions.

Buyers want speed—but not at the expense of certainty

AI is clearly helping. It makes things faster and surfaces information quickly. But when it really counts, buyers want to know the information is accurate—and they still want a human “second look”. That’s where tools like Cotality’s Realist® property intelligence platform come in, helping real estate professionals confirm the details. That human layer—verifying and applying information—is what turns uncertainty into confidence.

The takeaway for the industry

AI isn’t going anywhere, but it’s not the whole answer either. The future of real estate is a mix of both—smart technology paired with trusted data and real human expertise.

Read full survey findings here

Sponsored By ICE