News Quiz: Do you know the biggest stories for the week of Feb. 20?
Offerpad, RE/MAX, eXp Realty and CoStar all had earnings calls this week, but it was what happened behind the scenes in that drew attention.
Keller Williams co-founder Gary Keller spoke for nearly three hours Sunday during a keynote address at the brokerage’s annual Family Reunion in Texas, even as a judge in the state ruled on a temporary restraining order against the company’s former CEO, Mark Willis, who is seeking to join rival eXp Realty in an executive position.
Meanwhile, one particular feature stood out in a listing on Zillow that drew guffaws and bidding wars had an exemplary month.
On Sunday, Keller Williams co-founder Gary Keller gave a keynote address at the brokerage’s annual Family Reunion. What did the t-shirt he was wearing say?
Buy dirt. "Go buy dirt," Keller said while pointing to his shirt with the same phrase. "Go find dirt as a Realtor, go find dirt as a market center, go find people with land and show them what to build. You know better than anybody what they should build.". Read the story here.
WI4C2TS
To build careers worth having, businesses worth owning, lives worth living, experiences worth giving, and legacies worth leaving.
Buy dirt
None of the above
During CoStar’s first full year in the residential property space, Chief Financial Officer Scott Wheeler attributed a majority of the $75 million in revenue it drew from residential real estate in 2021 to this one asset.
Homesnap. Nearly all of CoStar’s residential revenue came from Homesnap, the portal company it moved to acquire at the end of 2020, Chief Financial Officer Scott Wheeler said during a call with investors Tuesday afternoon. Read the story here.
Homesnap
HomeSmart
Apartments.com
LoopNet
Home prices shot up this much in 2021, the biggest uptick in the 34-year history of the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Index, it was revealed Tuesday.
18.8%. Prices increased 18.8 percent year over year in 2021, the biggest increase seen in the 34-year history of the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Index, and a huge jump from 2020 when home prices increased only 10.4 percent. Read the story here.
35.2%
43.5%
18.8%
12%
Rising interest rates dented demand for this for the third week in a row.
Purchase mortgages. For the week ending Feb. 18, the survey showed applications for purchase loans were down a seasonally adjusted 10 percent week over week, and 6 percent from a year ago. Read the story here.
Purchase mortgages
Title insurance
Second homes
Power Buyer services
On Tuesday, Mauricio Umansky, CEO and founder of The Agency, announced his luxury brokerage was expanding into this city in the province of Quebec, Canada.
Montreal. Luxury brokerage The Agency announced on Tuesday the launch of a new franchise in Montreal in Canada’s Quebec province. Read the story here.
Vancouver
Toronto
Winnipeg
Montreal
A Texas judge last week upheld a temporary restraining order against this former Keller Williams CEO seeking to join competitor eXp Realty in an executive position.
None of the above. The legal battle for former Keller Williams CEO Mark Willis is far from over, according to a Feb. 18 court order that upheld the temporary restraining order keeping Willis from joining eXp Realty in an undisclosed executive role. Read the story here.
Josh Team
John Davis
Carl Liebert
None of the above
Bidding wars did this in January
Increased month over month. Seventy percent of home offers handled by Redfin agents faced bidding wars, up from 67.1 percent in December 2021 and 60 percent in January 2021, the highest rate since Redfin started tracking it in April 2020.Read the story here.
Increased month over month
Decreased month over month
Earlier this week,short-term rental giant Airbnb surpassed a goal it set for itself in August. What was that goal?
Temporarily housing 20,000 Afghan refugees. Airbnb surpassed its goal of temporarily housing 20,000 Afghan refugees and has set a new goal to house 20,000 more refugees, the company announced earlier this week. Read the story here.
House a total of 2 billion guests worldwide
Temporarily housing 20,000 Afghan refugees
Go a full year without reports of an illicit party at an Airbnb
Surpass 6 million U.S. hosts
Outgoing RE/MAX Holdings CEO Adam Contos attributed much of his company’s success in 2021 to this.
The acquisition of RE/MAX Integra. Outgoing RE/MAX Holdings CEO Adam Contos said the acquisition of RE/MAX Integra’s North American regions in June 2021, which included more than 19,000 agents and 1,100 offices across Canada and the United States, provided the needed momentum to help RE/MAX bolster its agent count, revenue and adjusted EBITDA after a topsy-turvy 2020. Read the story here.
The acquisition of RE/MAX Integra
iBuying
booj
None of the above
Social media users were agog after Zillow Gone Wild seized on an image in a $799,000 Long Grove, Illinois, listing that recently appeared on Zillow and other search portals.
A gold toilet. A home for sale in Long Grove, Illinois, is attracting attention online for a particularly flashy piece of plumbing. The $799,000 five-bedroom house features a number of gaudy touches, but perhaps none as attention-grabbing as the gold toilet occupying one of its five bathrooms. Read the story here.
What appeared to be Steve Buscemi drinking a beer
A naked woman
A gold toilet
A broken window