Marriott Wardman Park might close for good
“Employees of the 102-year-old Woodley Park institution on Sunday received word from managers that the hotel would be shuttered and a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notice would be filed permanently terminating them from their jobs, their union representatives said Wednesday. The hotel has been closed since mid-March and its more than 500 employees were laid off, temporarily, it was thought, due to the Covid-19 pandemic.”
????
Always: Your Listing. Your Lead. Your Commission.
“At Homes.com, we are committed to being a friend and ally to the real estate industry. Our purpose is to connect consumers and real estate pros through a simply smarter home search experience.
Period.“
I don’t think Homes.com gets enough credit in the industry for not only talking the talk but walking the walk. Other portals are going deeper into agent’s pockets with new business models that really attack the heart of a real estate practice. Listing portals now want to take ownership of the customer, charge referral fees, and then convert them to their own mortgage house. Basically making agents Uber drivers.
Not Homes.com. While they may not have the most traffic their site does get a lot of engagement. And there’s this:
“And we promise to always send a copy of every consumer inquiry on a property to the listing agent. None of the other big real estate search sites can say this.”
What remarkable about that simple statement, is that it’s remarkable.
Keller Williams ends exclusive deal with Offerpad
“As Keller Williams does with any product or service for associates, Keller Offers consistently measures the value we provide to ensure we remain a product that agents want in their tool belts,” Gayln Zeigler, director of operations at Keller Offers, said. “As part of that process, we now recognize the need to expand the program beyond Offerpad.”
Going forward, the company will use multiple offers for each home that requests an offer through Keller Offers. The aim, according to Zeigler, is to provide homeowners with more competitive offers and fuel the company’s expansion plans in 2020 and beyond.”
This was not going to last. Gary only wants to work with Gary. Gary wants to be the only vendor that KW agents work with, period. He basically craps on all other vendors, not in private, but on a stage in front of thousands of people. It’s a shame because some of the most passionate and smart agents I meet are from KW.
The multiple offer concept is great, but if you play it out it will never work. iBuyers don’t want to be aggregated, and building a network of independent investors that have the resources to actively service these types of requests in real-time is really hard, if not impossible.
I will say that I enjoyed Gary’s last interview with Brad at the recent Inman ConnectNow conference. I do believe his motivation is consumer-driven. But why all the vitriol towards other companies in the space? There are other good people in this industry who care about agents and have the same beliefs.
OJO Labs raises $62.5M, acquires residential search site Movoto
“OJO Labs, the real estate technology startup behind OJO, an artificial intelligence-powered virtual home shopping assistant, has raised a new round of $62.5 million in both equity and debt funding, the majority of which is equity funding, it announced Wednesday.
The company is also acquiring Movoto, a growing residential search website that says it has more than 24 million monthly visits.
We have large ambitions and those ambitions are only exciting if they get realized at scale,” John Berkowitz, the CEO and co-founder of OJO Labs, told Inman. “What this allows us to do is be able to really innovate and create a better experience from the very beginning of home search all the way to living in the home and innovate along that entire journey within completely our control and autonomy.”
No purchase price is given for Movoto. And the $62.5M in a combination of equity and debt (loan), which brings their total raise (equity and debt) to $134M. Remember equity you don’t have to pay back, debt you do. Even if the majority was equity, so let’s make that $32M in equity and $30.5M in debt. Movoto had previously raised $8M. VCs would love a 10X return, but that obviously isn’t happening here. But 24M unique visitors (even if it’s peak COVID stats) is impressive.
So I think the VCs are just moving their Movoto chips to OJO, with a modest 2X multiple ($16M) payout and hoping for another bite at the apple.
But I’m always surprised how much money is being thrown around so I could be (meaning I am) wrong.
Elm Street Technology Acquires IDX Broker To Broaden Offerings And Drive Continued Growth
“We’re excited to have IDX Broker and its talented team join Elm Street Technology, which will help power the next stage of our growth,” said Prem Luthra, President and CEO of Elm Street Technology. “For over 17 years, IDX Broker has been serving tens of thousands of real estate customers with high-quality, innovative products and top-shelf customer support. With a common corporate culture, we expect the integration of our two companies to be seamless and we look forward to adding their products to our growing suite of services, which will have meaningful benefits for both companies’ customers.”
The Great Consolidation continues. Prem is quietly rolling up a few strategic companies in the space. To do that you need data. It will be fun to see what this master plan becomes. Congrats to Chad Barczak and his team.
