Where Real Estate Gets Its Dirt

Nationstar rising…

Interesting analysis about Nationstar, RED’s new owner.

Nationstar moves one step closer to total mortgage market domination
Jacob Gaffney, HousingWire.com

“Nationstar is moving one step closer to total mortgage market domination.

During the call, Bray discussed at length the acqusition of digital real estate marketplace Real Estate Digital, expected to close in the next quarter. RED is a fee-based real estate services company that provides online marketing, data, transaction management and digital media solutions.

“We intend to utilize RED’s capabilities to build HomeSearch 2.0, which will include search functionality and industry-leading residential real estate data,” he said. “This data will allow consumers, realtors and investors to research properties and more importantly, transact in a number of ways.”

In the end, Nationstar expects to provide end-to-end real estate and mortgage services with exceptional customer service, which will deliver “a customer for life,” Bray said.

In other words, total mortgage domination.

Search, sell, list, buy, title — you name it and Nationstar is going to provide it through its HomeSearch.com platform.

“Our macro goal is to capture a fee component of as many U.S. real estate transactions as possible,” Bray said.

Sounds like Zillow 3.0

And at another point in the call he adds this gem:

“We see an opportunity to leverage our heritage as a non-agency servicer to provide financial solutions to the developing market that could include portions of the nearly 68 million under-banked consumers and 72 million millenials in the United States. We are currently evaluating non-agency and expanded purchase mortgage strategies.”

That’s loads of money waiting to be had and Bray is convinced his company has an honest shot at a big portion of it.

And from what I know about Nationstar, he very well might be right.

I’m not too versed on banker speak, what does “non-agency and expanded purchase mortgage strategies mean”? I hope it doesn’t mean, what I think it means.

Thanks for the heads up @tcar

Nationstar acquires Real Estate Digital (RED) for 18 million in cash.

NATIONSTAR REPORTS FIRST QUARTER 2014 FINANCIAL RESULTS & STRATEGIC ACQUISITION

“Nationstar Mortgage Holdings Inc. (NYSE: NSM) (“Nationstar”), a leading residential mortgage services company, today announced that its fee-based real estate services business, Solutionstar entered into a definitive agreement to acquire substantially all of the assets of Real Estate Digital and its affiliate for USD 18m in cash in May.”

This is the HUGE news. Back in 2011 Jay Gaskill structured a management buy out of the franchise/broker and agent division of LPS. A mere 3 years later they flip for 18 million.

For those who don’t know, RED basically powers online real estate. They have one of the largest pools of IDX feeds in the industry, powering many large brokerages, including HomeServices brokerages along with Berkshire Hathaway and also Real Living. They act as a data provider for many other 3rd party software companies. And of course they are the data aggregator for NAR’s Realtor Property Resource (RPR). This brings about many questions.

My congrats go out to the entire team at RED.

VFlyer launches, Lasso, a home search collaboration tool.


Agents and consumers can organize, communicate and share listings from around the Web

“Once a listing is corralled within Lasso, users can rate the listing out of five stars, make comments on it and add tags. Users can share their corral of listings with friends or family, who then can see the ratings, comments, tags and listings the user has on Lasso.

Lasso also automatically updates changes to listings every day by checking source sites through an automated program that notes changes in homes’ for-sale or for-rent status, their price and other info.”

Maybe REALTORS will find Lasso easier to spell than Dwellicious.

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