Where Real Estate Gets Its Dirt

The Balloon Has Landed


Real to Acquire RE/MAX, Creating a Leading Technology-Enabled Global Real Estate Platform

“When Gail and I founded REMAX in 1973, we built a company for business-minded entrepreneurs with a customer-service mindset. For more than 50 years, REMAX has attracted trusted, productive professionals, shaped the real estate industry, and changed the lives of buyers and sellers around the world… I know now is the right time and Real is absolutely the right partner to move REMAX into the future.” — Dave Liniger, RE/MAX Co-Founder

So. Real Brokerage, with its 33,000 agents, is acquiring RE/MAX and its 145,000 agents for $880 million. The combined company will be called Real REMAX Group. Tamir Poleg will run it from Miami.

33,000 buying 145,000. The company that’s been around for less than 10 years just swallowed the company that’s been around for 53.

The Liniger quote is the one to pay attention to. That’s not a guy being dragged to the altar. Liniger literally shifted the entire real estate industry to a more agent focused model. He created the future of real estate back in the day, and today is saying, “now is the right time,”. 

I think I understand the deal. Real gets the global footprint and franchise cash flow it never had and agent economics it desperately needed. 180,000 agents across 120 countries. On paper, it’s elegant. The tech play I’m not so sure about. RE/MAX had Booj, then Inside Real Estate, now Real’s reZEN and HeyLeo? Product fatigue is a thing, Real should understand this if they really think their tech stack is a meaningful factor to their success.

Now zoom out. Compass closes on Anywhere in February and suddenly controls Coldwell Banker, Century 21, Sotheby’s, and roughly 25% of the agent population. Two months later, Real eats RE/MAX. We’ve gone from thousands of independent brokerages to a world where two companies could control close to 40% of all agents in the U.S.

Let that settle for a minute.

Here’s the real question. RE/MAX was built on a specific promise: you’re an independent contractor running your own business, the franchise owner is your partner, not your boss. That is a big deal to the RE/MAX network which tends to attract more experienced agents.

Having done a lot of business with RE/MAX over the years, it’s very, how do you say… Colorado.  Corporate culture is going to be a thing.  Plus franchise owners didn’t sign up to be employees of a tech company in Miami either. They signed up to be entrepreneurs with a balloon on their sign. If the integration respects that, this could work. If it doesn’t, those 145,000 agents have legs.

The consolidation continues, and the year isn’t even half over.

From Pixels to Property Intelligence with Dominik Pogorzelski

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

Overview

Greg Robertson is joined by Dominik Pogorzelski from Restb.ai to discuss the evolution of AI in real estate—from early photo tagging to large-scale property intelligence. They cover how AI is now embedded in MLS workflows, powering listing input, compliance, and valuation, while also exploring the challenges of scale, accuracy, and the future of AI in the industry. 

Key Takeaways

  • Restb.ai has been AI-first from the start, building on early computer vision models before the current AI boom. 
  • Their tech automatically tags listing photos, generates captions, and flags compliance issues during listing input. 
  • AI is deeply integrated into MLS workflows, improving listing data quality and agent efficiency. 
  • Scale matters: they process ~1.5B real estate images per month, making speed, accuracy, and cost critical. 
  • Specialized computer vision models outperform general LLMs for image tasks at scale. 
  • Compliance is a key use case—detecting prohibited elements and AI-manipulated images in listings. 
  • New regulations around altered images are increasing the need for detection and transparency tools. 
  • Expansion areas include valuation, appraisal workflows, insurance, and broader property intelligence. 

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

Dracarys

Compass International Holdings Gives a Data Feed of All of its Listings to MRED

“MRED is announcing nationwide expansion of its MLS service, including the Private Listing Network (PLN), to any licensed agent.”

“Compass International Holdings is also committed to subsidizing some of the cost of MRED access to the first 100,000 Compass International Holdings agents to join MRED as full members.”

Holy shit! A regional MLS in Lisle, Illinois just announced it’s going national. And the largest brokerage in the country is picking up the tab.

Let me back up.

A few weeks ago I wrote about Reffkin’s proposal for a brokerage-owned national MLS. At the time, sources told me he’d pitched the idea on stage of Brian Donnellan CEO, of Bright MLS leading the charge. Apparently that didn’t go anywhere. So Robert went shopping and found a willing partner in Rebecca Jensen, who has been running MRED for years and has never been shy about doing things differently.

I once compared Rebecca to Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones on Industry Relations. She’s been building dragons for a decade with the Private Listing Network, quietly, while the rest of the MLS world debated whether private listings should even exist. Now she’s burning the map.

This is MLS consolidation, but not the kind we’ve been tracking. Not two neighboring MLSs merging to save on overhead. This is a single MLS going national overnight, powered by Compass’s inventory and Compass’s checkbook. MRED goes from 250,000 listings annually to… what exactly? Compass alone does over a million transactions a year post-Anywhere. That’s not expansion. That’s a whole new animal.

Now let’s talk about what they’re actually offering. MRED says agents can “manage price history, days on market, and automated valuation models.” That sounds an awful lot like suppressing information that buyers would find useful. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m not a fan of less information in real estate. Full stop. But here’s my real question: is MRED still capturing actual DOM and price changes on the backend, just not displaying them publicly? Because if the data exists internally but gets hidden from consumers, that’s one conversation. If it’s not being tracked at all, that’s a much scarier one. And will other MRED brokers like their MLS getting so cozy with Compass?

Then there’s this line: “MRED also commits to protect and safeguard agents who participate in its PLN from being banned or penalized by third party portals and IDX feed recipients.”

Bold. Really bold. But how? Zillow has already shown it will punish listings that get marketed outside their ecosystem before hitting the MLS. What exactly is MRED going to do when Zillow bans a Compass agent’s listings? Send a strongly worded letter? File a lawsuit? Kick them out of the MLS? I’d genuinely love to know, because that promise is either the most important sentence in this press release or the emptiest.

Look, I see what’s happening here. Reffkin has been playing chess all year. The Redfin syndication deal. The war on Clear Cooperation. The national MLS pitch. And now he’s found an MLS CEO willing to go full Dracarys with him. Rebecca gets to go from running a midwestern MLS to running a national platform. Robert gets an MLS partner who won’t fine his agents for pocket listings and will actually fight the portals on his behalf. It’s a hell of a deal for both of them.

Whether it’s a good deal for everyone else… that’s the part I’m still working out.

MLS Mega Merger and Boomers vs. First Time Home Buyers

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

Overview

Rob and Greg discuss a major MLS merger in South Florida, creating one of the largest MLSs in the country and what it signals for future consolidation. They debate whether this is the start of a larger wave of “mega mergers,” and what it could mean for markets like Texas and California. The conversation then shifts to a major housing trend: first-time homebuyers dropping to historic lows while boomers dominate the market. They explore whether affordability, interest rates, or generational shifts are driving the change—and what it could mean long-term for the housing industry.

Key Takeaways

  • Major MLS merger in Florida:Miami and Beaches MLS combine into a ~93,000-member entity, now the third largest in the U.S.
  • Consolidation trend:This could be the beginning of more “mega mergers” as MLSs look to scale and reduce fragmentation.
  • Operational challenges ahead:System consolidation, leadership transition, and cultural differences will shape how successful the merger is.
  • First-time buyers at record low:Only 21% of buyers are first-time homeowners—the lowest ever recorded.
  • Boomers dominating purchases:Boomers now make up 42% of buyers, largely driven by downsizing and relocation.
  • Debate: Are boomers competing with first-time buyers?Rob argues they may be targeting similar homes; Greg يرى them as different segments with different priorities.
  • Affordability crisis remains core issue:High prices, interest rates, and low inventory continue to block entry for new buyers.
  • Bigger-picture concern:Long-term affordability challenges could reshape housing demand—and even influence future political and economic policy.

Links

South Florida Just Became a Superpower
Baby Boomers Remain Largest Share of Home Buyers as First-Time Buying Falls to Record Low

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

Giant Steps offers free “Pre-marketing Listing Toolkit”

We Built a Pre-Market Listings Toolkit for MLS Leaders. Here’s Why — and It’s Yours.

“If you’ve been following the real estate industry over the past year, you know the conversation around private listings and pre-marketing has moved fast. Zillow Preview, the Compass-Redfin partnership, eXp’s deals with Homes.com and Realtor.com — it feels like the landscape shifts every few weeks. And if you’re an MLS executive or board member trying to brief your leadership team on what’s happening, keeping materials current is its own full-time job.

We know because we’ve been living it.

At Giant Steps, we work with MLS organizations and proptech companies navigating exactly this kind of complexity. Over the past several months, we’ve been fielding the same questions from clients and colleagues: What’s the difference between a pocket listing and a private listing? How does Zillow Preview actually work? What does this mean for my MLS?

So we decided to build a set of materials that any MLS organization can use to get their board and leadership up to speed — quickly, clearly, and without spin…


Head over to the Giant Steps Advisors blog to download the PDFs

HAR Goes Real-Time

Repliers Partners with HAR.com to Expand Real-Time MLS Data Access

“This partnership reflects our philosophy of giving world-class services to our subscribers with valuable tools to build better and faster, while gaining new data insights and security features made possible by real-time data consumption through Repliers.”

— Rene Galvan, President and CEO, Houston Association of REALTORS®

HAR just made Repliers the exclusive platform for real-time MLS data distribution to its subscribers and vendors. One shared infrastructure layer. No more lag, no more brittle pipelines, no more every-vendor-builds-their-own-data-stack.

But the interesting part isn’t the MLS data. Everybody’s got MLS data. It’s that HAR is throwing in three proprietary datasets at no cost: member pageviews and leads from HAR.com, real-time showing activity from ShowingSmart, and verified agent performance ratings. Buyer demand signals, market momentum, consumer behavior. That’s the good stuff.

Shared infrastructure instead of redundant data plumbing. That’s where the industry needs to go, and HAR continues to be one of the most forward-thinking MLSs in the country.

ICE [Sponsor]

The new MLS platform

If you haven’t heard, ICE continues to invest in modernizing the MLS experience, and the result is the Paragon Connect MLS platform. 

Paragon Connect is a new experience for Paragon users, a modern MLS platform that works the same on desktop and mobile, and users are impressed.

In the recent Paragon Connect CSAT survey, the numbers tell a compelling story.

44% of end users — nearly half of all respondents — rated their experience a 5, “Very Satisfied.” That’s nearly 45% of users who didn’t just tolerate the platform. They loved it.

When you look at the scores, the trend is clear. The largest group landed at the top of the scale, with scores of 3 and above, making up over 80% of responses. 

That’s a user base that is engaged, invested, and — most importantly — satisfied.

For MLS organizations still evaluating whether Paragon Connect is ready for their membership, this data is worth paying attention to. End user satisfaction is one of the hardest metrics to move in this industry. Scores like these reflect real investment in the platform and a genuine commitment to the user experience.

The agents have spoken. The data backs it up. If Paragon Connect has been on your radar, now might be the right time to take a closer look.

South Florida Just Became a Superpower

Dionna Hall

MIAMI REALTORS® and RWorld Announce Merger Creating the World’s Largest Local Realtor Association

“Two of the strongest MLS and Realtor organizations in the U.S. are now one, building on South Florida’s momentum as a global real estate powerhouse and shaping the industry’s next frontier.” — Alfredo Pujol, Chairman of the Board, MIAMI REALTORS®

93,000 members. Read that number again.

MIAMI REALTORS® (56,000 members, the largest local association in the U.S.) and RWorld (37,000, the third largest) are merging into a single organization, Miami and South Florida REALTORS®, effective May 11. MSFR MLS? That’s larger than 47 state associations. More than double the next biggest local association. And when they combine the MLSs, it’ll be the third-largest MLS in the country behind Bright and CRMLS.

This isn’t two small boards merging because they can’t afford their tech stack anymore. This is the #1 and #3 local associations in the country looking at each other across the Broward County line and saying, “This is ridiculous — it’s time.”

Knowing a little bit about the data licensing has worked in the past this is going to be a HUGE win for brokers and agents.

A few things that jumped out:

Teresa King Kinney and Dionna Hall will serve as Co-CEOs, continuing what the press release correctly notes is 60+ years of women’s leadership across both organizations. Kinney retires at the end of 2026 after 33 years running MIAMI, with Hall taking over as sole CEO in 2027. That’s how you do a leadership transition — you don’t just announce it, you build a bridge.

Jonathan Dolphus becomes the first African American Chairman of the Board in the history of either organization. Super cool.

The MLS piece is interesting. Both systems — Flexmls and Matrix — will keep running initially, with a combined MLS coming later (cage match?). Members get access to both platforms. And the combined MLS will have data exchanges with 11 of the largest MLSs in the U.S. and Canada, plus they’re joining the Global Data Exchange. For an association that already has 437 international agreements, South Florida just became even more of a magnet for global real estate.

Division boards for both MIAMI and RWorld will stick around to preserve each organization’s culture. Smart. The mergers that blow up are the ones where one side feels like they got absorbed. This looks more like a marriage than an acquisition.

$69 billion in total real estate volume in 2025. 93,000 members. Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, St. Lucie, and parts of Martin counties — basically the entire southeast coast of Florida under one roof.

NAR called it the “largest, fastest, and most seamless merger” in its history. We’ll see about the seamless part — that’s always easier to say on day one. But the ambition here is real, and the structure looks like they actually thought it through.

My hat’s off to Pujol, Dolphus, Kinney, and Dionna. This is what it looks like when two organizations merge from a position of strength instead of desperation.

The consolidation continues…

Realtracs Says the Quiet Part Out Loud

Who Owns Listing Data? We Say Brokers Do.

“The uncomfortable reality is that our industry treats listing data as if they have a right to use it however they want. Brokers and agents earn listings and invest in them. The data that follows should not be treated as a commodity. It’s their work product and a business asset.”

Back in February, Realtracs restructured into three entities — a holding company, a product company, and an investment arm — with a new 7-member board stacked with independent directors. Stuart White said the governance model needed to evolve because over 30% of new Realtracs users were coming from outside Middle Tennessee. It was a smart, quiet move that most people outside Nashville probably missed.

Now we know what the restructuring was for.

Realtracs just killed their Participation Agreement — the standard MLS contract that every broker signs — and replaced it with something called a Brokerage Services Agreement. And the difference isn’t cosmetic. The new agreement explicitly states that the listing broker owns their listing content and the data that comes with it. Not the MLS. Not the association. The broker.

That’s a big deal. And here’s why.

For decades, the industry has operated in this hazy middle ground where nobody really defined who owned the data. MLSs collected it, distributed it, licensed it, monetized it — all under the catch-all phrase “for MLS purposes.” Brokers created the listings but had very little say in where the data went or what was done with it once it entered the system.

Realtracs is saying: that’s over. Under the new agreement, listing data can only move in ways that serve the brokerage’s economic interest or operational efficiency. If it doesn’t serve the broker, it doesn’t happen.

Read that again. If it doesn’t serve the broker, it doesn’t happen.

Now — will every MLS follow suit? No. Some MLSs have built entire business models around the idea that listing data is their asset. Data licensing, third-party feeds, analytics products — all of that gets a lot more complicated when the broker has explicit ownership rights and a legal foundation to enforce them.

But someone had to go first. And the fact that it’s Realtracs — an MLS that just restructured specifically to move faster and align more closely with brokers — tells you this isn’t a press release. It’s a strategy.

I just worry about 2nd and 3rd order consequences here. But I’ll wait to comment on those later since I’m told Realtracs will have more news to share soon.

The Southeast Just Got Bigger

Southeast MLS Alliance Expands with Addition of realMLS in Northeast Florida

“The Southeast MLS Alliance was built on the idea that stronger regional connections lead to better outcomes for everyone in the transaction — agents, brokers, and consumers. Adding realMLS and the Northeast Florida market to that network is a natural fit. Each addition to the Alliance expands the value of membership for every MLS and every professional already part of it.” — Joseph Cullom, CEO, CHS Regional MLS

The Southeast MLS Alliance — CHS Regional MLS (Charleston), Realtracs (Nashville), Canopy MLS (Charlotte), and Georgia MLS — just added realMLS out of Jacksonville. That brings the network to 118,000+ subscribers stretched across five major southeastern markets.

Look at the geography for a second. Nashville. Charlotte. Atlanta. Charleston. And now Jacksonville. That’s an arc from Tennessee to the Florida coast with very few gaps in between. If you’re an agent working a relocation referral from Charlotte to Jacksonville, or Charleston to Nashville, you’re now looking at the same data inside your MLS platform. No second login. No calling a friend of a friend.

This is the quiet version of MLS consolidation. Nobody merged. Nobody got acquired. Nobody’s brand disappeared. They just… connected the pipes. Shared active and historical listing data. And every time another MLS joins, the value of being in the network goes up for everybody already there. It’s the network effect working exactly as designed.

Nicole Jensen at realMLS called it “eliminating barriers,” which is a phrase that gets thrown around a lot in press releases. But in this case, it’s actually what’s happening. Agents in Jacksonville can now see listing data across five southeastern markets without leaving their platform.

With the MLS count now below 500 and dropping, alliances like this are one answer to the consolidation question. You don’t have to merge to get the benefits of scale. You just have to be willing to share.

My hat’s off to Cullom and the Alliance for building something that keeps growing, as I’m fond of saying the best marketing is having a good product.

Sponsored By ICE