Where Real Estate Gets Its Dirt

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

Zillow Wins Preliminary Injunction – MRED Must Restore IDX and VOW Feeds

Judge orders MRED to restore Zillow listing feeds in Chicago

“In an emailed statement, a Zillow spokesperson told HousingWire, that the ruling on its motion was “an important first step for the Chicago home buyers, sellers and agents who have been harmed by a coordinated scheme between MRED and Compass to reduce transparency in the housing market.” 

“In the middle of a housing affordability crisis, powerful industry players colluded to hide listings, suppress competition and steer consumers toward a single dominant brokerage,” the spokesperson wrote. “The court immediately recognized what was at stake, not just for Zillow, but for every person trying to find or sell a home across Illinois and beyond. We will continue to fight to ensure this anti-consumer conduct is not allowed to take root permanently.”

Welp, it looks like Mr. Reffkin will need find a place to store his billboards.

DAY 3: No Soup for You!

DAY 2

The Struggle is Real

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

Overview

This episode starts with Greg discussing Giant Steps’ new MLS channel guidebook and the growing difficulty vendors face navigating organized real estate. Rob and Greg unpack how MLS relationships, site licenses, and enterprise deals have changed, why vendor distribution is getting harder, and how AI could completely reshape SaaS and real estate technology business models. The conversation then shifts into AI as “labor” rather than just software, token-based economics, infrastructure wars between Zillow, Compass, and the MLS ecosystem, and how the fallout from Sitzer/Burnett continues to reshape the industry. They also debate BLX, MLS cooperation, and whether MLSs are behaving more like governments than businesses.

Key Takeaways

  • Greg explains why MLS site-license deals are becoming rarer and why vendors increasingly need direct-to-agent strategies.
  • Rob compares MLSs to government bureaucracies and argues vendors often need “lobbyists” to navigate the system.
  • Discussion on AI shifting from a SaaS tool to a labor replacement model powered by compute and tokens.
  • Rob and Greg explore how Zillow, Compass, and MLSs are competing to become the core infrastructure layer of real estate.
  • Debate over whether BLX strengthens MLS cooperation or creates a path around traditional MLS systems.
  • The long-term ripple effects of Sitzer/Burnett continue to reshape technology, brokerage, and listing distribution strategies.

Links

The MLS Channel Field Guide – From Giant Steps

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

Cotality [Sponsor]

Floor plans—from scan to listing-ready in MINUTES

AI is opening up new possibilities in real estate—and at Cotality, it’s built directly into everyday workflows to improve listing quality, strengthen marketing, and give agents more time back.

Cotality’s new CorePlans™ is a great example. It lets agents automatically generate detailed floor plans, room dimensions, and descriptions directly from their iPhone Pro. 

Leveraging LiDAR technology and Cotality’s proprietary CoreAI, agents can create ANSI-compliant floor plans in minutes—eliminating the traditional 24–48 hour processing turnaround— with 99.96% accuracy. Fully integrated into Matrix™, everything uploads with one tap, with room dimensions and descriptions automatically added to the listing.

According to a 2025 WAV Group study, 85% of buyers find floor plans extremely valuable. They are the new essential marketing standard that buyers expect. 

There’s a clear gap between what buyers want and what most listings deliver. CorePlans help close that gap. 

Available first to MLSs with the new Matrix Listing Manager, then rolling out to additional providers that meet requirements. Want to learn more? For more information, reach out to your Cotality rep to schedule a demo or visit cotality.com.

Sponsored By Cotality