A five-person team built an artificial intelligence platform used by 30,000 real estate agents across 240-plus brokerages in 16 months, all without outside capital.
Now BrokerBot, a Tucson, Arizona-based company operated by Ribera AI, Inc., has announced on Friday that it closed a seed funding round led by Grand Ventures, with participation from Second Century Ventures, the strategic investment arm of the National Association of Realtors. The company also joins the 2026 NAR REACH cohort, SCV’s flagship scale-up program for real estate tech.
Financial terms of the round were not disclosed.
Jerimiah Taylor
BrokerBot trains AI assistants exclusively on a brokerage’s own documents, policies, and forms, not generic internet data, and deploys them across chat, SMS, voice, web and email. Brokerages report the system resolves roughly 83 percent of real estate agent questions automatically, saves more than 33 staff hours per brokerage per month, and has driven a 70 percent reduction in minor contract corrections.
”We’ve spent the last 20 years operating real estate brokerages and the last year building the AI teammate we always wished we had, one that knows our brokerage inside and out, never sleeps, and earns trust by being compliance-first, not hype-first,” Jerimiah Taylor, BrokerBot co-founder and CEO, said in a statement. “With Grand Ventures leading our seed, Second Century Ventures investing alongside, and NAR REACH supporting us, we’re moving from answering questions to actually getting work done across the brokerage stack.”
‘They come back 6 months later’
The company’s pitch to brokerages is compliance-first AI, a direct counter to the “just build it with Claude Code” impulse, which Taylor says he constantly runs into among brokers trying to cut costs.
“What I run into is, ‘Oh, I could just build this with Claude Code,’” Taylor told Inman. “And then six months later, they come back and say, ‘Well, that didn’t work out. Can I buy your thing now?’”
Taylor said the average broker underestimates the liability exposure created by running consumer-grade AI tools, models that aren’t enterprise-contracted, don’t have data retention agreements, and can surface client information in unpredictable ways.
The high compliance requirements for AI in real estate, Taylor said, force brokers into one of three decisions: prohibit agents from using AI, which is very unlikely; require agents to use enterprise-grade AI and place the onus on them; or provide a brokerage-wide solution themselves.
“In all those scenarios, we’re in a really good spot because we’ve made a significant investment in providing a truly secure platform,” he said. “It sets the bar high for anyone trying to chase us.”
Arizona, where BrokerBot is headquartered, gives the company a structural runway to test that message. The state’s Attorney General’s Office operates a “regulatory sandbox” that allows companies working in regulated, licensed industries to operate without full licensing requirements while they develop.
Taylor sees NAR — “possibly the most powerful lobbying arm in the country,” in his framing — as a vehicle to shape AI regulation at the national level before states diverge too widely.
“We’ve taken the time to understand the rules at the national, state, and local levels, and I think NAR can help us have a seat at the table when regulations are created,” Taylor said.
Built lean, by design
The seed round will go primarily toward building out BrokerBot’s sales organization, Taylor said. The engineering headcount stays lean by design. The company’s development team produces roughly half a million lines of code per quarter using AI-assisted tools, and a two-person customer success team currently supports all 30,000 users.
“Building a company in this environment, even just from a year ago, is really different. It changes how you forecast headcount and growth,” Taylor said.
Platform metrics the company disclosed: 291,000-plus unique visitors, more than 500,000 messages exchanged, 22x message growth over 10 months, and 69 percent of activity occurring after business hours.
The numbers point to a pattern, Taylor said, that repeats across every deployment. Managing brokers get relief from the repetitive-question queue, and real estate agents get answers when no one else is available.
Current integrations include Keller Williams Command. BrokerBot was named to KW’s initial third-party developer lineup when the company launched its Command platform in February, alongside Google Calendar, Gmail, Microsoft Outlook, Canva and Follow Up Boss.
Deployments span independents like Baird & Warner, which runs a BrokerBot assistant called “Remi,” as well as franchisees at Keller Williams, Coldwell Banker, Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate, United Real Estate and Engel & Völkers.
What’s next
Seed capital and a REACH seat point toward a clear next phase: agentic workflows.
Rather than answering agent questions, Taylor wants BrokerBot to complete tasks by integrating with transaction management, e-signature platforms, and MLS data to take action on behalf of real estate agents and staff, rather than routing information back to them.
On the product side, the company has also built what Taylor described as a proprietary video-processing layer. The system opens video files in cloud containers, uses AI agents to watch and listen simultaneously, and indexes the output so agents can query spoken content by the second.
The use case: surfacing a specific moment from a training video or recording in response to a natural-language question.
“It’s probably the nerdiest thing we’ve built yet,” Taylor said. “But it was hard, and it’s really slick when it works.”
Tim Streit, co-founder and general partner at Grand Ventures, said BrokerBot was the first platform he’d seen train on a brokerage’s own workflows and clear compliance requirements at scale, and that the 240-plus live deployments provided the verification.
“We’re proud to lead this round and to back the team building what we believe will become the operating layer for the modern brokerage,” Streit said.
Second Century Ventures, the investment arm of the National Association of Realtors, announced its 2026 REACH cohort on May 28, naming the startups it’ll spend the next year pushing into the industry through NAR’s membership network, mentor relationships and market access.
Since 2019, REACH has expanded well beyond its original U.S. residential lane into commercial and global programs, with a total portfolio now topping 375 companies worldwide.
The 2026 class is Ai.realestate, Association Online, BrokerBot, LotRoll, MaxHome.ai and StackWrap.
This year’s cohort is notable less for any single name and more for what the cohort, taken together, says about where brokerage operators think real estate’s real problems still live: compliance burdens, fragmented data, HOA transaction delays and a manufactured housing sector that’s largely been left offline.
From HOA data to manufactured housing
The clearest thread running through the 2026 class is brokerage infrastructure.
BrokerBot is an enterprise AI platform handling admin, compliance, training, and real estate agent guidance. MaxHome.ai is a transaction intelligence play aimed at automating compliance workflows and reducing manual operational lift.
StackWrap wraps existing brokerage tech stacks — tools brokers already pay for — into a single dashboard with visibility into agent adoption rates.
That’s three of six companies essentially betting that the back office is still broken enough to build a business around.
The other three are a bit more targeted. Ai.realestate, which markets itself as AiRE, centralizes unstructured internal data and pairs it with property, mortgage and client intelligence. The pitch is a living database for sales teams, not a point solution.
Association Online focuses on a narrower problem: HOA data and transparency at the closing table, a notoriously delayed step in many residential transactions.
Ashley Stinton
LotRoll may be the most niche of the group, bringing data and infrastructure to the manufactured housing market, which REACH describes as “one of housing’s most overlooked segments.”
“Whether focused on streamlining complex workflows and notoriously fragmented datasets, building and improving infrastructure, or creating transparency and access, each of these six solutions harnesses the power of modern technology to elevate the level of service and connection between clients and the real estate professionals who serve them,” Ashley Stinton, managing partner of NAR’s REACH, said in a statement.
‘The real problems AI is solving for’
It’d be easy to read the 2026 cohort as an AI class. Several of the companies rely heavily on the label in their marketing. Stinton’s framing deliberately sidesteps that, and it’s worth noting she means it.
“REACH has accelerated the growth of numerous AI solutions for the industry, and we will continue to lean into AI,” she told Inman. “We also want to cut through the buzz-worthiness and emphasize the real problems AI is solving for.”
The REACH program has backed AI-native companies before. Stinton pointed to Courted.io, which pitches AI-driven brokerage recruiting and performance tools, and QwikFix, which uses AI to generate real-time repair quotes from inspection reports, as examples of prior portfolio companies delivering “tangible return” rather than just AI positioning.
What it takes to make the cut
Application volume was consistent with prior years, according to Stinton, though a higher share this year was AI-centric. She noted significant volume in consumer communication and transparency tools, as well as in real estate media and visualization products, categories she attributed to ongoing regulatory and policy shifts in the industry.
More than one hundred applicants applied during the formal application window, according to Stinton, and REACH reviewed hundreds of companies throughout the year in advance of the application cycle.
What doesn’t get selected, she said, is typically pre-product companies. REACH’s stated standard is demonstrated product-market fit and initial traction. The reasoning is straightforward. A program designed to accelerate growth at scale doesn’t have much to offer a company that hasn’t launched yet.
“We want to ensure products, their teams and their organizational structure are ready for the significant scale we can provide,” Stinton said. “It’s not just about a quick lift in revenue but sustainable acceleration of their business during the program and well beyond.”
Stinton added that pre-product companies typically aren’t selected “not because we aren’t interested in concepts, but because the resources the REACH program delivers will have the greatest impact on companies post-launch.”
“Many of the companies not selected have very strong potential, and we will consider them for future cycles,” she said.
An ecosystem of collaboration
When asked about prior REACH companies, Stinton said some of the most pleasant surprises are when founders build strong relationships within the REACH portfolio early on.
“Fundraising is grueling, selling is a grind and competition is fierce, so it’s important we create an ecosystem of collaboration and empathy where founders support each other, and the industry, as much as we support them,” Stinton said. “The companies that have leveraged our portfolio community and our extended community of mentors and industry partners have been among the most resilient and capable throughout every market condition.”
Stinton pointed to Real Grader as an example.
“Alex Montalenti, founder and CEO of Real Grader, leans in at every event and with every connection,” she said. “He has quickly become a top thought leader in helping real estate professionals optimize their digital presence, which is critical as consumers increasingly leverage social media and AI search to get connected to an agent.”
Stinton added that Real Grader is now also uniquely available to hundreds of thousands of Realtors through brokerage, association and MLS partnerships.
What needs disruption and what doesn’t
REACH has set unique goals with each company, but Stinton said the overarching success for this cohort would be an improved experience throughout the real estate transaction for consumers and agents, as well as for the supporting ecosystem across brokerage, mortgage, title, and home services.
“We are confident this group of technologies will deliver more transparent transactions, increased access, improved interactions and, ultimately, create better outcomes for each relationship,” Stinton said.
Success also means providing clarity around the role of AI and the tangible results it offers to real estate.
“When everything is labeled AI, it distracts from identifying meaningful value,” Stinton said. “Let’s challenge the status quo, and let’s do it fast. But let’s do it right. That means being clear about what truly needs disruption versus what already works well. The industry could use dynamic stability right now.”
Our fiduciary duty is not to tech platforms or national brokerage strategies, Compass team lead and Zillow customer Ben Lalez writes. It is to the human beings who trust us to guide them through the housing market.
On Wednesday, May 20, 2026, the Chicagoland housing market experienced a digital earthquake. Following a complex data licensing dispute and a subsequent federal lawsuit, Midwest Real Estate Data (MRED) officially suspended its listing feed to Zillow.
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Almost overnight, roughly 43,000 local properties vanished from the internet’s most widely used consumer search portal. Then, less than 48 hours later, a federal judge granted a temporary restraining order requiring MRED to restore Zillow’s access to real estate listings, leaving the entire real estate world asking, “What just happened?”
A view from the fault line
To understand this crisis, I have to be entirely transparent about where I stand: I am a Compass agent, but I also maintain a deep, highly successful relationship with Zillow as a partner. I don’t have the luxury of sitting in a detached corporate boardroom choosing a side. Every single day, my business relies on both ecosystems.
I use the cutting-edge tools and exclusive inventory provided by Compass, and I simultaneously utilize the massive consumer reach and lead flow generated by Zillow. I love both platforms.
But right now, watching them pull the market apart feels exactly like watching a messy, toxic corporate divorce, and the agents, buyers, and sellers are the kids caught in the crossfire.
Mom, Dad and the custody battle
In this industry split, both parents are operating on deeply held, logical business paradigms. Both are, somehow, correct.
On one side, you have the institutional broker network and the MLS. Let’s call them “Mom.” Mom is rules-oriented, protective of the household data asset and demands that every participant play by an identical set of local rules.
On the other side, you have the national tech platform Zillow. Lets call it “Dad.” Dad is flashy, user-friendly and controls the massive consumer audience. Dad believes in total data fluidity and objects to any friction that restricts listing visibility. He also has the best toys (leads).
Both arguments make perfect sense inside an executive boardroom. The problem is that houses aren’t sold in boardrooms; they are sold on local Chicago streets. While Mom locks the front door and Dad cuts off the allowance, the clients are sitting on the stairs watching the living room furniture get thrown out onto the lawn.
The casualties on the ground
This data disruption impacts every layer of a real estate transaction:
- For sellers: Homeowners do not track macro-level antitrust litigation. They expect maximum exposure for their primary financial asset. Waking up to find their property missing from the country’s largest portal introduces immediate, unnecessary anxiety.
- For buyers: The public search experience is officially fragmented. Navigating an incomplete local real estate inventory makes finding a home in a tight market feel like solving a puzzle with missing pieces.
- For agents: Working professionals are forced to handle the fallout, managing frustrated clients while trying to maintain pipeline momentum without the seamless syndication tools they have relied on for a decade.
What do the kids do? Focus on the client, not the courtroom
My opinion is simple: Stop waiting for Mom and Dad to fix it, and stop letting corporate standoffs dictate your value. Taking a hard line for one corporate flag over the other is a distraction. My only job is to plant my flag in a client’s front yard.
Our fiduciary duty is not to tech platforms or national brokerage strategies. It is to the human beings who trust us to guide them through the housing market.
When the digital channels break down, the human advisor becomes the ultimate anchor.
This standoff is a powerful reminder that our true value proposition has never been about hitting a “syndicate” button. It is about work ethic, hyperlocal market intelligence, and deep personal and agent databases. Buyers still need to find homes, and sellers still need to move.
While the tech giants resolve their differences in a federal courtroom, the agents, buyers, and sellers who win this market will be the ones who bypass the corporate noise, pick up the phone, and rely on the human connection: the only resource that remains the stable, definitive gatekeeper of Chicago real estate.
Ben Lalez is lead at The Ben Lalez Team at Compass. Get connected on YouTube and Instagram.
U.S. home purchase loans hit their lowest quarterly level since early 2014 and pending home sales fell for a second consecutive week, according to new reports from Attom and Redfin.
For millions of would-be homebuyers, the math still doesn’t work.
U.S. home purchase loans fell to their lowest level in 12 years in the first quarter of 2026 and pending home sales declined for a second consecutive week, new data shows, underscoring the toll that elevated mortgage rates and home prices are taking on housing affordability.
Roughly 581,000 home purchase loans were originated from January through March 2026, down 19 percent from the previous quarter, the lowest quarterly total since early 2014, according to the Q1 2026 U.S. Residential Property Mortgage Origination Report from real estate data firm Attom. Purchase lending totaled nearly $237 billion in the first quarter, down 18 percent from the fourth quarter of 2025 and down 8 percent year over year.
The slowdown was broad. Purchase activity fell quarter over quarter in 99 percent of the 200 metros analyzed by Attom. According to Realtor.com’s analysis of the Attom data, the steepest quarterly drops in purchase activity among large metros were in St. Louis, down 43.5 percent; Rochester, New York, down 38.6 percent; Honolulu, down 16.1 percent; Boston, down 19.3 percent; and Pittsburgh, down 28.7 percent.
The only metros where purchase activity did not fall were Yuma, Arizona, up 28.6 percent, and Tucson, Arizona, up 5.9 percent, according to Attom.
On the demand side, pending home sales fell 1.5 percent from a week earlier on a seasonally adjusted basis during the week ending May 24, the second straight decline after four weeks of gains. Mortgage-purchase applications dropped to their lowest level since early April, according to Redfin. The median monthly housing payment climbed to $2,637 at a 6.51 percent average rate, the highest level in 11 months.
The daily average 30-year fixed mortgage rate hit a 10-month high of 6.75 percent last week before easing to 6.61 percent on May 27, according to Mortgage News Daily. Redfin attributed the recent rate increase to several factors, including the ongoing Iran war and closure of the Strait of Hormuz, rising oil prices, AI-driven inflation and Fed officials signaling the possibility of rate hikes.
The median sale price rose 2.2 percent year over year to $398,768 for the four weeks ending May 24, according to Redfin. Active inventory stood at roughly 1.49 million homes, with months of supply at 3.4, still below the four to five months considered a balanced market.
Bernice Ross shares strategies for combining niche marketing with high-level AI prompting to develop a business-building engine and superpower your production.
The headlines are awash with all the prompts you need to use to build your real estate business.
- Headlines about Claude are everywhere, all promoting “here’s exactly what you need to do.”
- ChatGPT still reigns supreme in the Large Language Models (LLMs).
- Perplexity is excellent for pulling local comparable sales data.
- Grok is the only LLM that is designed to work with real-time data (think self-driving cars and space travel) and can pull up what’s happening on places like X (Twitter) in real time.
This is all well and good, but it misses what you should be doing before you ever open up any AI application.
For over 30 years, I’ve been training agents on business planning. At the heart of this training is understanding where your income is really coming from and then creating one to three niches around those proven sources of revenue.
Ever since I got into the business in my 20s, one fact has never changed: Almost all top producers are niched into a very specific segment of the market where they are the recognized local expert. Trying to be everything to everyone simply doesn’t work, especially when both traditional search and AI search are now being asked, “Who is the best agent in this area?”
Jimmy Burgess’s recent columns are gold in terms of what you need to do to be found on AI. Before you write that profile or do anything else, however, you must first do a deep dive into your personal business and identify exactly where your transactions are coming from.
10 questions to answer to find your production niche
- What are the two top price ranges in which you sell?
- What are your top two productive lead generation sources? (Open house, referrals, door knocking, website, social media, video, expireds, FSBOs, etc.)
- What are the two top age groups that you currently attract?
- What two types of households do you normally attract? (Single man, single woman, married with kids, empty nesters. Specify size. )
- What two types of careers/jobs do most of your clients hold?
- Did you represent more buyers or sellers?
- Where do most of your clients originate? (local, which states, countries?)
- What are the two top areas where you sell the most property? Be specific.
- Name at least three things that you have in common with your clients.
- Name at least three things that your clients have in common with each other.
Here’s a sample business planning spreadsheet I’ve used in my training for years. While this may take you some time to complete, it’s essential to your success before you ever open an AI chatbot. The reason? It identifies your greatest strengths based on your production.
This data is your beginning point to share with the LLM of your choice, because it tells the LLM way more than just words alone about who you are and what your business actually is today. (Include your last closed for the past 18 months or your 25 most recent closings).
Here is an example from one of my past clients. (Please note the abbreviations mean the following:
Total Volume = $12,356,000
*Lead Source: PCB= Past client buying, PCL= Past client listing, PCR = Past Client referral for new business, Sphere = Referral from SOI
**Family Type: C-kids = couple with kids at home; Couple = with no kids at home; Single = Never married M or F or Unmarried. M-W Divorce = Represented Man or Woman, in a Divorce
The last two rows show the categories where this agent generated the bulk of her business. Specifically,
- Her sweet spot for houses (36 percent) was between $500,000-$630,000.
- Her second sweet spot for condos (24 percent) was between $210,000-$295,000.
- Her greatest source of business (48 percent) was from past clients.
- She has a very clearly defined niche based on the age of her clients — 56 percent were between the ages of 40 and 50.
- Of her total number of transactions, 44 percent were with single women or women going through a divorce, and 56 percent were working in high tech.
- 60 percent of her business was listings (32 percent houses in Oak Hill and 28 percent from condos in Playa). Note that she had three transactions with people from India. I suggested that she double down on marketing to this group. She did so and got a $2 million listing and a $4 million sale.
Turning this data into prompts
This is the power of starting with your actual production data instead of guessing what niche you “should” have.
Once the pattern is clear, you can immediately turn those insights into prompts that create “AI-readable trust.” Here are five prompts you can copy and use today:
- Bio prompt: “Write a one-sentence professional bio for me as a real estate agent whose primary niche is high-tech professionals aged 40–50, especially single women and women in transition, in the $210,000-$630,000 range in the Oak Hill and Playa areas.”
- Content prompt: “Create a 30-day content calendar for me as a real estate agent specializing in high-tech professionals and women in life transitions in those neighborhoods, focused on helpful, local, non-salesy posts.”
- Review prompt: “Write a warm email I can send to recent clients asking for a detailed review. I am a real estate agent who specializes in high-tech professionals, single women/women in transition, 40-50 years old, in Oak Hill and Playa.”
- YouTube prompt: “Give me 8-10 YouTube video title and description ideas for me as a real estate agent specializing in high-tech professionals aged 40-50, especially single women and women in transition, in the Oak Hill and Playa areas.”
- India expansion prompt: “Create three sample LinkedIn or email messages to expand my high-tech niche to clients from India. I’ve already closed three transactions with Indian clients and want to build genuine relationships.”
AI is powerful, but it can only amplify what you share with it. Do your homework first by using the production profile above to identify your actual production niches. Once you have those details (and AI can read spreadsheets), you’ll know where the real opportunities are in your business.
When you provide AI that level of clarity, you stop guessing and start building a business that will not only allow search engines to find you, but AI to recommend you as well.
A federal judge restored 43,000 Chicago listings to Zillow on Friday. Good. Now let’s talk about the 48 hours that showed every agent in America what one brokerage is willing to do with that kind of power.
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On Friday, May 22, federal Judge John Tharp Jr. granted Zillow’s preliminary injunction and ordered MRED to restore its listing feeds to Zillow and Trulia by end of day. The roughly 43,000 Chicago-area listings that vanished on Wednesday morning are back.
That is a relief for every seller and every agent in Chicagoland. But if you look at that ruling and think the story is over, you are missing the point. The 48 hours between the feed cutoff and the court order told us everything we need to know about what Compass is building, and what it is willing to do to the rest of us to get there.
What happened during those 48 hours
On Wednesday morning, MRED pulled its listing feed from Zillow. Not some of it. All of it. The reason? Zillow refused to display nine Compass Private Exclusive listings located in California, Florida and Georgia. States where MRED has never operated. Nine listings, out of roughly 43,000.
MRED’s own press release cited the ratio: 99.98 percent of inventory suspended over a dispute involving 0.02 percent. They offered that number as a defense. Read it again. That is not a defense. That is a confession.
Within hours, Compass posted a social media ad comparing its listing inventory to Zillow’s. The side-by-side showed a Lincoln Park search: 118 homes on Compass versus 20 on Zillow. The caption read: start your search on Compass.com to find your home today.
Then Compass-owned brands joined the push. @properties Christie’s International Real Estate, Coldwell Banker Realty and Jameson Sotheby’s International Realty all posted variations of the same message: Consumers may not find all available homes on Zillow.
Then Compass CEO Robert Reffkin posted renderings of billboards with the message “Zillow doesn’t have all the listings” and asked agents where they should place them.
Let me say that more plainly. One brokerage’s strategy resulted in 43,000 of your listings being pulled from the largest real estate portal in the country. And before the dust settled, that same brokerage (Compass, Sotheby’s Coldwell Banker, etc.) launched an ad campaign using your lost visibility as their sales pitch.
The immediate problem is solved. The real problem is not
Judge Tharp’s ruling fixes the immediate crisis. Listings are back. Sellers can exhale. But the ruling is temporary, and even when it becomes permanent, it does not fix what was exposed this week.
Here is the question every agent in America needs to sit with: Are you OK with a competing broker having enough influence to get your listings removed from any search portal?
Because that is exactly what happened. A brokerage that competes with you for listings, that recruits against you, that pitches against you at listing presentations, flexed enough leverage through an MLS partnership to get your seller’s home pulled from the biggest real estate website in the country. And then they celebrated it in a marketing blitz.
Your seller did nothing wrong. You did nothing wrong. But your listing became a bargaining chip in someone else’s corporate fight.
The power play behind the partnership
The MRED-Compass national alliance, announced in April 2026, opened MRED membership to any licensed agent in the country. Compass committed to subsidize costs for up to 100,000 of its agents. On an earnings call shortly after, Reffkin described the strategy plainly: Compass was building a national MLS to compete against local ones.
Zillow’s federal antitrust complaint alleges that Fran Broude, a Compass regional vice president, simultaneously sits on MRED’s board of directors. A senior executive of the brokerage at the center of the rule dispute is also helping govern the MLS enforcing that rule.
The complaint also alleges MRED rewrote its IDX rules in October 2025 specifically to give itself authority over how Zillow displays Compass Private Exclusives, including in states outside MRED’s traditional service area. These are the same rules MRED cited as the basis for Wednesday’s suspension.
These are allegations in active federal litigation. They have not been proven. But MRED’s press releases this week have not publicly denied any of them.
This is not a Chicago story
This is a power story that happened to surface in Chicago because that is where the concentrated MLS authority currently lives.
Every agent and broker being pitched on the new MRED national platform, in Phoenix, Atlanta, Dallas, Nashville, Charlotte, Seattle or anywhere else, is being asked to place their clients’ listings inside a structure that just demonstrated, on the public record, what it will do when a dispute arises. And the brokerage behind that structure showed you, in real time, how it plans to use the disruption to its competitive advantage.
I coined a term for listings that are only accessible to buyers working with agents at one brokerage: the company FSBO. What happened in Chicago takes that concept further. It is not just about keeping your own listings inside one company anymore. Now the play is to remove their competitors’ listings (that’s you) from the portals so they become the primary destination for buyers.
What you should do right now
Ask your MLS leadership a direct question: Could this happen here? What prevents a single brokerage from influencing which portals receive your listings? If they cannot answer clearly, that is a problem worth raising at the next board meeting.
And remember what the independent data shows. Zillow’s own research across 2.72 million transactions found that sellers who limit exposure sell for 1.5 percent to 3.7 percent less. Bright MLS found that pre-market listings take a median of 37 days to reach contract, versus 20 days for full MLS. Maximum exposure serves sellers. Restricting it serves the brokerage.
The true colors
I’ve said publicly that Robert Reffkin and I have had a collegial relationship, and I respect that it takes courage to stand by a business model under fire. That has not changed.
But last week showed us something important. The 43,000 listings are back. Celebrate that. Then pay attention to what was revealed while they were gone.
The social media ads. The billboard renderings. The coordinated messaging not just across Compass but its owned brands, such as Coldwell Banker. All of it launched within hours of your listings disappearing. That was not a crisis response. That was a marketing plan waiting for a trigger.
This fight was never about seller’s choice. It is about who controls listing distribution, and who profits when that control shifts. Compass has shown us its true face. Every agent in this country should be paying attention, because if it can happen in Chicago, it can happen in your market.
Disclaimer: This article discusses allegations in active federal litigation that have not been proven in court.
]]>Is Compass wrong? Is Zillow off base? It doesn’t matter. They’re not the villains; old thinking and outdated assumptions are, coach Verl Workman writes.
The real estate industry is pretending the Zillow fight is about consumer transparency. It’s not. It’s about control.
More specifically, it’s about what happens when an entire industry builds its visibility on platforms it doesn’t own.
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That’s the real story underneath the escalating battle between Zillow, MRED, Compass, and the growing war over private listings, portal access and listing distribution.
Everybody is framing the argument around consumers
One side says broader exposure protects transparency. Another says sellers deserve more strategic control over how listings are marketed. MLS organizations argue they’re preserving cooperation and fairness. Portals argue they’re protecting access and visibility.
But underneath all the public posturing is a far less comfortable reality: The industry spent years celebrating digital visibility while quietly surrendering control of it. And now the bill is coming due.
For years, agents were encouraged to build businesses around:
- Portal exposure
- Platform-generated leads
- Algorithmic visibility
- Paid digital audiences
- Marketing ecosystems they did not actually own
As long as the system kept producing leads, very few people questioned the arrangement.
Visibility rented from a platform is never truly yours
The moment policies change or algorithms shift, the entire business model becomes vulnerable. That is exactly why this fight matters nationally. Because this is not really a legal story. It is a structural story.
The portals didn’t become powerful accidentally. The industry handed them the power. Slowly. Conveniently. Profitably.
Every time agents prioritized short-term lead flow over long-term relationship ownership, the dependency deepened. Every time the industry treated distribution as infrastructure instead of leverage, the dependency deepened. Now the industry is discovering what happens when the systems everyone relies on no longer align.
And this is only the beginning.
Artificial intelligence is already flattening marketing advantages. Listing descriptions sound identical. Social media content is becoming interchangeable. Automated campaigns are everywhere. Consumers have unlimited access to information, estimates, market data, financing tools and AI-generated real estate guidance before ever speaking to an agent.
Information is no longer the advantage. Control of attention is
That’s why the battle over listings has become so aggressive. Inventory creates leverage. Visibility creates influence. Audience ownership creates power. Everybody in the industry understands this now.
Zillow understands it. Compass understands it. MLS organizations understand it. The question is whether agents understand it. Because a lot of agents built businesses on digital land they never actually owned.
Some became so dependent on borrowed visibility that they stopped building direct market authority altogether. That was never a stable long-term strategy. And now the instability is becoming impossible to ignore.
Private listing networks are expanding. Portal rules are changing. Lead costs continue rising. AI is commoditizing presentation and marketing faster than most agents realize.
The agents who survive the next phase of this industry won’t necessarily be the ones with the biggest advertising budgets or the most polished automation.
They’ll be the ones who own trust directly.
The ones with:
- Relationship-driven businesses
- Referral ecosystems
- Local authority
- Consistent community visibility
- Reputations that exist independently of any single platform
Because trust carries through market shifts. That’s the part of the industry many people ignored while chasing scale.
The irony is that the more technologically advanced real estate became, the more dangerous dependency became underneath it.
Whether Zillow wins or the MLS wins is almost beside the point now. The industry already lost something important: The illusion that agents still control the systems their businesses depend on. And once that illusion breaks, the conversation changes permanently.
Something is changing. The pressure you feel is not random. It’s structural; the market is moving, and the agents who thrive from here will likely think differently than the last generation did. You cannot solve a thinking problem with a tool.
So, what do you do?
The answer is not to do more. The answer is to redesign the model.
A lot of firms respond by pushing harder. More hours, more context switching, more personal involvement. That may produce short-term survival, but it rarely creates durable leverage. Redesigning the model does.
Is Compass wrong? Is Zillow off base? It doesn’t matter. They’re not the villains; old thinking is. Outdated assumptions.
You need to automate the drag around your expertise — everything that keeps stealing your time.
Most real estate professionals won’t make the shift. Not because they can’t; because they won’t. This isn’t about capability; it’s about willingness to adapt.
The industry keeps treating this like a software problem when it’s actually a positioning problem.
But the agents who adapt will think differently. They won’t build businesses entirely dependent on borrowed visibility. They’ll build direct trust. Direct relationships. Direct community authority.
Because in a market where platforms, algorithms and distribution models continue shifting, the safest business model may no longer be the one with the most exposure.
It may be the one with the strongest connection to the consumer before the platform ever gets involved.
Stop telling buyers that a fixed-rate mortgage means their payment will never change. Rising property taxes and insurance costs make that bad advice, Bernice Ross writes.
For decades, we have trained our agents and consumers to believe that if you have a fixed-rate mortgage, your monthly loan payment will not change. For the 80 percent of borrowers who have mortgage escrow accounts, that’s simply not true.
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Instead, these borrowers must pay their private mortgage insurance (PMI) if required, property taxes and their homeowner’s insurance statement, prorated monthly along with their mortgage payment. Soaring insurance rates and property tax increases due to appreciating prices not only stretch the borrower’s budget but could even lead to foreclosure.
Savvy agents will want to set their clients up for success by providing them with education about the potential changes to their new home payment in the future. In this article, we will break down the specifics of what knowledge to sow, and which myths about fixed-rate mortgages need to go, especially for first-time buyers.
Your clients likely have the wrong idea
According to a Lereta Survey conducted in January 2025, approximately 80 percent of all mortgage holders have a mortgage escrow account. The idea is to help the borrower by spreading insurance and tax payments over 12 months rather than paying them as a lump sum.
What happens in practice is that the buyer often ends up paying six to 12 months of these costs upfront when their property closes.
The survey also showed how pervasive this myth is:
- 45 percent of respondents mistakenly believe their payments cannot change if they have a fixed-rate mortgage.
- Over the past two years, 80 percent of borrowers have experienced a tax increase, 70 percent have seen their homeowner’s insurance increase and 27 percent said their insurance policy had been dropped by their carrier. Of those, 65 percent have had difficulty getting another policy with a different carrier.
- In terms of the impact, 49 percent said it would be a hardship if their monthly payment increased by 10 percent, and almost half of that group would consider moving from a major property tax increase, and 27 percent if they experienced a major insurance rate increase.
Update your buyer interview now
It’s critical that you explain the following facts to your buyers during your buyer interview:
- If they’re putting less than 20 percent down, they will have to pay monthly prorated PMI through a mortgage escrow account, as well as their taxes and homeowner’s insurance.
- Property taxes and insurance rates fluctuate. In most cases, they increase, which means so will the borrower’s monthly payment.
- While you need to alert your buyers to this situation, avoid trying to explain the details. Instead, refer them to their lender for the exact details of how that lender’s programs work. Most lenders are usually quite happy to explain the process and answer any questions the buyer may have.
What happens when the borrower’s escrow account runs out of money?
When the borrower’s escrow account runs out of money, they have three options:
- Pay the remaining balance as a lump sum payment on top of what they’re already paying for their monthly payment.
- Negotiate with their lender to see if they can find an alternative for handling the situation. During the pandemic, many lenders used a tool called “forbearance,” which allowed borrowers to defer payments until the end of the loan or when the property sold. Other programs allowed the borrower more time to pay off the loan or change the interest rate.
- The worst-case scenario is that the lender can file a Notice of Default and begin foreclosure proceedings. Most institutional lenders really don’t want a foreclosure on their books. If any of your past clients are in this situation, encourage them to contact the lender right away to explore all available options.
- The other option is to sell and find an alternative property with lower costs.
The offer conversation you won’t want to have, but need to have anyway
Unless your buyers are paying all cash, you need to explain how increases in property taxes and insurance payments can derail a deal while the property is under contract, just like an increase in interest rates can. Be especially wary if you’re selling in areas prone to various types of disasters because these are the key drivers behind most rate increases. Whether it’s hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, hail, fire or earthquakes, you need to know the major risks in your area.
To illustrate this point, Austin, Texas, has earned the dubious title of “Flash Flood Capital of the World,” due to the extreme thunderstorms we have here. Along with flooding, these storms can also produce tornadoes, wind damage and large hail events that damage roofs, vehicles, windows, etc.
Our weather patterns here also produce ice storms that down trees and powerlines, and that can cause serious injury if you slip on the ice. Together, these events all drive higher insurance rates here in Texas.
Furthermore, a property where the roof is more than 10 years old or has prior insurance claims, deferred maintenance or high exposure to wind, hail, wildfire or flood risk may produce a higher premium rate today than even 12 months ago. It’s important that buyers shop for insurance to find the best possible deal for their home purchase.
The affordability conversation needs to change
Today, our buyers are facing a major threat from rising property taxes and insurance costs. Continuing to tell buyers that a fixed-rate mortgage means their payment will never change is not only inaccurate, but it can also be dangerous.
The most successful agents are having these candid conversations early. They’re updating their buyer interviews to clearly explain escrow accounts, PMI and the very real possibility that monthly housing costs will increase over time. They’re also addressing insurance and tax risks during the offer stage, especially in high-exposure markets.
Buyers who understand these dynamics make better decisions, experience fewer unhappy surprises, and are far less likely to face hardship or forced sales after their transaction closes. Your role is to arm your clients with the full truth. By doing so, you will earn greater trust, build stronger and longer-lasting relationships with your clients, and close more transactions.
Bernice Ross is president and CEO of BrokerageUP and RealEstateCoach.com, the founder of Profit.RealEstate and a national speaker, author and trainer with over 1,500 published articles.
Google announced it’s done with blue links. LinkedIn is actively fighting the AI content wave it helped start. And Spotify learned its users have strong feelings about disco balls.
Google announced it’s done with blue links. LinkedIn is actively fighting the AI content wave it helped start. And Spotify learned its users have strong feelings about disco balls.
Platforms are racing toward automation while audiences keep signaling they want something that feels real and human.
Google wants users to search less
Google’s biggest announcement at I/O wasn’t a gadget. It was confirmation that traditional search is no longer the product the company is building.
The company unveiled what it called the biggest shift to Search since its launch: A move away from ranked website links and toward a conversational, agent-driven experience powered by Gemini AI.
Instead of a results page, Google’s new Search experience prompts users to ask follow-up questions inside AI Mode. The search box now supports longer, natural-language queries similar to ChatGPT or Gemini. Google also announced AI agents that monitor topics and send updates, dynamic AI-generated visuals and widgets inside Search, personalized mini-app creation and persistent “project spaces” users can return to over time.
The direction: Google wants users to spend less time navigating the web themselves and more time letting AI gather, summarize and organize information for them.
Links still exist. They’re just no longer the primary interaction point. Google’s AI Overviews already reduced referral traffic for many publishers. This moves further toward keeping users inside Google’s ecosystem.
What this means for real estate professionals
SEO is no longer just about ranking webpages. Visibility depends on whether AI systems can understand, summarize and surface your content inside conversational search experiences.
Professionals who rely on organic search traffic, blog content or neighborhood landing pages may see further traffic declines even when impressions hold steady. Authority, structured expertise and recognizable brand presence will matter more than keyword targeting.
Panic about Spotify’s disco-ball logo
Spotify is already walking back its temporary disco-ball app icon after user backlash online.
The glowing green mirrored icon was introduced as part of the company’s 20th anniversary celebration. Many users criticized it as difficult to read, visually cluttered or simply unpleasant on a phone screen. Spotify confirmed the original logo will return next week as planned.
It reads like a minor overreaction. But the intensity of the response says something about how people interact with digital platforms now.
Users spend hours inside these apps daily. Small visual changes can feel disruptive because people develop near-subconscious relationships with interfaces they use constantly. Familiarity becomes part of the product. The backlash also reflects growing resistance to brand updates that feel internally fun rather than user-focused. Even temporary changes get evaluated through usability and friction.
What this means for real estate professionals
Consistency matters more than most brands realize. Whether it’s a website, logo, email template or social presence, frequent or trendy visual changes can create friction instead of excitement. Audiences tend to value familiarity and ease over novelty, especially in an industry built on trust and recognition.
LinkedIn is encouraging AI use while also punishing AI overuse
LinkedIn is expanding access to Crosscheck, a tool that lets users compare responses from different AI models side-by-side. The feature, rolling out to more U.S. users, allows professionals to test prompts across models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Microsoft.
At the same time, LinkedIn announced new limits on the reach of low-quality AI-generated content. The company says it will reduce visibility for posts and comments that appear automated or lack original perspective, and it’s adding stronger verification filters to flag AI-generated spam accounts and bot-driven engagement.
The tension is real. LinkedIn wants professionals using AI — the app already includes AI writing assistance for posts, profiles, job applications and recruiting. But the platform also knows users are losing patience with generic AI-generated “thought leadership” clogging their feeds.
The issue isn’t AI assistance. It’s sameness. As more users rely on AI to generate content with minimal editing or personal input, feeds fill with polished but interchangeable posts that feel disconnected from actual expertise. LinkedIn appears to be drawing a line between AI as a productivity tool and AI as a replacement for human perspective. That line gets blurry once platforms make automated creation frictionless.
What this means for real estate professionals
AI can help with content creation, brainstorming and research, but heavy reliance may work against visibility and trust. Platforms are starting to reward originality and recognizable expertise over polished generic output. The professionals who stand out will be the ones using AI to support their voice, not replace it.
Paul McCartney’s TikTok debut is a lesson in connection
Paul McCartney is launching his newest album with a TikTok Live Q&A, reinforcing TikTok’s role as a discovery and engagement platform that cuts across age and audience assumptions.
Audiences care less about whether someone “fits” a platform and more about whether the content feels engaging and accessible. TikTok rewards direct connection and participation over polished broadcasting, and that holds whether you’re a legacy artist or a local agent posting a neighborhood tour.
Live Q&As, behind-the-scenes content and casual updates often outperform marketing content because they make audiences feel connected to the person behind the business.
What this means for real estate professionals
Social media continues to be less about perfect branding and more about consistent, human connection. The agents who build familiarity and accessibility online are the ones audiences remember when it’s time to buy or sell.
TL;DR (Too Long, Didn’t Read)
- Google is replacing link-based search with a conversational AI experience driven by agents and generated interfaces
- LinkedIn is encouraging AI use while reducing the reach of generic AI-generated content
- Spotify’s logo backlash showed how strongly users protect familiar interfaces
- Paul McCartney’s TikTok launch proved audiences respond to access and connection regardless of platform demographics
AI is changing how people search, create content and interact online, but audiences are becoming more sensitive to anything that feels overly artificial, overly disruptive or disconnected from a real human perspective.
Each week on Trending, digital marketer Jessi Healey dives into what’s buzzing in social media and why it matters for real estate professionals. From viral trends to platform changes, she’ll break it all down so you know what’s worth your time — and what’s not.
The Community Associations Institute has filed an amicus brief arguing the Corporate Transparency Act was never meant to reach the nonprofit, volunteer-led boards governing 373,000 community associations.
A law that was meant to catch criminals hiding behind corporate structures may instead impact your neighbor who just wants to tweak the pool schedule.
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According to an amicus brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court by the Community Associations Institute (CAI), a federal anti-money laundering law called the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) is being improperly applied to nonprofit homeowners and condominium associations. CAI argues that the law creates “unnecessary administrative burdens and discourage[s] homeowners from volunteering to serve their communities.”
Dawn Bauman
“Nearly 1 in 4 Americans live in over 373,000 community associations nationwide. These are locally governed nonprofit organizations run by volunteer homeowner board members that help maintain roads, stormwater systems, landscaping, pools, lighting and other shared infrastructure and municipal-like services residents rely on every day,” CAI CEO Dawn M. Bauman said. “CAI believes Congress never intended for volunteer-led community associations to be treated the same as anonymous shell companies engaged in money laundering and other illicit financial activity.”
Bauman said that the CTA was passed in 2021, and shortly thereafter, CAI recognized that nonprofit community associations were being inadvertently swept up into its enforcement “despite posing low risk for illicit financial activity.”
The membership organization subsequently appealed to members of Congress and their staffs to explore exemptions, submitted an official request to the Treasury Department for an exemption and, ultimately, filed the amicus brief to argue that community associations fall outside of the intended scope of the law.
Application of the law would require volunteer board members to submit personal identifying information to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, including names, addresses, dates of birth and driver’s license or passport information, plus uploaded identification documentation. Failure to comply could result in associations and board members being hit with civil and potential criminal penalties of up to $10,000 and two years in prison.
“Community association boards regularly experience turnover as homeowners rotate on and off boards through elections, resignations or relocations,” Bauman said. “That creates a unique challenge under the CTA because, unlike traditional corporations with paid executives, compliance departments, or in-house legal teams, community associations are nonprofit organizations largely run by volunteer homeowners. Frequent board turnover could require continual updates to beneficial ownership filings and place ongoing compliance responsibilities on volunteers with no commercial or compliance function.”
Bauman said the CAI is also concerned the law might discourage volunteers from serving on HOA and condo boards due to privacy concerns and potential civil and criminal penalties.
While Bauman said her organization has not conducted a formal cost study, CAI estimates compliance could result in “hundreds to thousands of dollars annually in additional legal, administrative, and management costs tied to attorney review, filing updates, and ongoing compliance obligations.”
In addition, CAI points to privacy concerns “related to invasive personal disclosures, who may access the data, under what circumstances it could be shared, and whether sufficient privacy protections exist for volunteer board members.”
According to a 2024 snap survey of 951 community associations by The Foundation for Community Association Research, 81 percent of members surveyed believe that the CTA’s reporting requirements might make it harder to get community members to volunteer, and 72 percent believe the requirements may increase turnover and lead board members to resign.