Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is the seller of a $63 million mansion in Hunts Point, Wash., just east of Seattle, the Puget Sound Business Journal reported Thursday.

The newspaper, which first reported on the sale Wednesday, noted that the sale shattered the state’s previous home sale price record. The Journal cited an industry source in confirming Bezos as the onetime owner.

Bezos acquired the sprawling waterfront estate at 4053 Hunts Point Road in 2019 for $37.5 million, which also broke the state record, set in 2018 when a Medina mansion sold for $26.75 million.

The sale this week was to a buyer called Cayan Investments LLC, according to the Journal. It incorporated in Delaware in March and has a post office box in Medina. The seller is Hunts Point Properties Trust whose trustee is attorney Kristine Wilson.

The 9,420-square-foot home was designed in 2003 by Seattle architect Jim Olson, of the firm Olson Kundig, and was once owned by the late Barney Ebsworth, a luxury travel magnate and prominent art collector who died in 2018.

The Olson Kundig website describes the property as an “understated house on the shore of Lake Washington” with a design that “weaves art and nature together.”

Hunts Point is a wealthy enclave that’s home to other prominent billionaires and business elite, such as former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Costco co-founder James Sinegal.

In a “peek inside” the mansion in 2019, The Seattle Times said the three-bedroom, four-bath home sits on 300 feet of west-facing Lake Washington shoreline. It features a rooftop deck with a fireplace, elevator, catering kitchen, two-story guesthouse, and a glass-enclosed shower that juts into a walled Japanese garden.

Bezos, who announced in November 2023 that he was leaving Seattle for Florida, is the second richest person in the world with a net worth of $198 billion, according to Forbes.

The Journal reported that Bezos still owns two properties as part of a portfolio he originally amassed in the Hunts Point and Medina areas: a 30,000-square-foot Tudor-style mansion acquired in 2010 for $45 million; and adjacent property in 1998 for $10 million.

Business Insider reported in 2023 on Bezos’ real estate spending spree after his 2019 divorce from MacKenzie Scott. The site also spoke to Hunts Point residents about what kind of neighbor Bezos was, and some reportedly said he was notably absent from community events such as “Cleanup Day.”

In the exclusive South Florida community where he moved with fiancèe Lauren Sanchez, Bezos has purchased mansions next door to one another for $79 million and $68 million.

We’re going to miss Glenn Kelman’s earnings calls.

Redfin’s CEO, who last week announced a $1.75 billion deal to sell the tech-driven real estate company to Rocket Companies, has a rare knack for delivering colorful quotes and off-the-wall zingers — keeping analysts and investors entertained, at least, in what’s normally a dry and obligatory exercise for public companies.

“Plan B is to drink our own urine or our competitors’ blood — stay in the foxhole,” Kelman said in one striking example from June 2024, emphasizing Redfin’s resilience and determination in response to an analyst who asked about the company’s backup plan if mortgage rates were to rise unexpectedly again.

Redfin’s brand will remain intact after the deal. But as part of a larger company, Kelman won’t have quite the same opportunity to hold court with Wall Street, even if he does end up joining Rocket CEO Varun Krishna on earnings calls.

After this came up on the latest GeekWire Podcast (while discussing the deal with Stephanie Reid-Simons of RealEstateNews.com and Tim Ellis, former Redfin market analyst) I was inspired to compile a list of Kelman’s best earnings quips, by mining GeekWire’s reporting and creating a database of transcripts in NotebookLM.

(This doesn’t include his legendary quote on 60 Minutes in November 2007, “Real estate, by far, is the most screwed up industry in America.” Nor does it include his writing, such as the 2012 essay in which he observed, “We have a government to solve the problems that greedy, short-sighted businessmen like me can’t.”)

The end result is a case study in using levity, candor, and humility — plus ample references to pop culture — to navigate the ups and downs of leading a business.

With that, let’s turn it over to Glenn …

“I spent half the Super Bowl in the bathroom or upstairs making nachos because I didn’t want to see these competitor ads.” Kelman explained in 2024 that Redfin saw more website traffic despite rival CoStar Group’s massive spending on Homes.com ads during the big game.

“Nobody is more afraid of Amazon than me. I mean, those guys are animals.” Addressing questions about a 2019 collaboration between Amazon and Realogy, Kelman offered this perspective as context for his opinion that the partnership wouldn’t amount to much. He was right.

“Redfin believes in technology, but technology on its own is just a glorified toaster oven.” Describing Redfin’s culture and approach to innovation, Kelman said in May 2019 that what really matters is its people and how they treat each other.

“This analogy makes no sense, except the images of the exploding blood and the flamethrower are what always come to mind when people ask me about today’s housing market.” Kelman made a vivid comparison to the movie The Thing in a November 2020 earnings call.

“If you are not scared running a seasonal, cyclical business with fixed costs, there’s something wrong with you.” This how Kelman, in November 2021, explained his clear-eyed, pragmatic and “jittery” approach to running a business that depends so much on external market forces.

“Our goal is just to gain share every quarter for the rest of time.” Kelman explained the company’s rare form of eternal KPI in a February 2021 earnings call.

“iBuying isn’t going away. … It isn’t the end-all and be-all, the future of real estate. And it isn’t the alpha and omega, the death, the Vishnu god of destruction.” In the November 2021 call, Kelman used cosmic mythology to dismiss extreme views on iBuying, in which Redfin and other real estate companies bought and sold homes. He was wrong about it not going away.

“It’s sort of like a Delayed Blast Fireball, if you’ve ever played Dungeons & Dragons.” On an August 2019 call, Kelman offered this geeky analogy to explain the long-term impact of mass media on brand value.

“They were really in the sort of cryogenic suspension like Han Solo at the end of The Empire Strikes Back.” On a May 2021 call, Kelman explained the impact of bankruptcy and a scuttled acquisition by CoStar on RentPath’s business prior to its acquisition by Redfin.

“Man, that sounded so canned, but I swear, I just made it up on the spot.” That was Kelman’s self-assessment after making this-off-the-cuff comment on a February 2021 call: “What we’re trying to do is grow long term by offering a durable value proposition to customers and investors.”

“I love the idea of a music soundtrack next quarter. Let’s guide to that.” Kelman responded in May 2022 to an analyst’s suggestion that his prepared remarks should be accompanied by a dramatic score.

And it seems only appropriate to end with Kelman’s concluding remarks from the company’s most recent call, in February: “We’re going all-out, baby. Thanks for coming to the call. We appreciate how many of you show up. And now, we’re going to get back to selling houses.”

The Center of the Universe is getting less Googley.

Google confirmed Friday that the company plans to bring all its employees in Seattle together at its South Lake Union campus, citing a desire for better collaboration and community. That means Google will eventually leave its longtime campus in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood, which goes by that celestial nickname.

No specific timeline was immediately available. The consolidation plan does not appear to impact Google’s other major engineering hub in the Seattle region, a large complex in Kirkland, east of Lake Washington.

“We remain committed to our long-term presence in Seattle,” said Ryan Lamont, a Google spokesperson, in an emailed statement responding to GeekWire’s inquiry. Reiterating past statements, Lamont said Google is broadly “focused on investing in real estate efficiently to meet the current and future needs of our hybrid workforce.”

He added that the company has been in Washington state for nearly two decades and plans to continue to invest in its presence in the region.

Google first established a foothold in Fremont in 2006, its second major location in the region, after initially landing in Kirkland in 2004. It was part of a broader move to tap into the region’s tech talent pool.

The company led the trend of Silicon Valley tech companies establishing engineering centers in Seattle, followed by Facebook, Apple, and more than 100 others.

Google’s Fremont campus expanded over the years, and by 2018, the company had grown to occupy a 190,000-square-foot campus in the neighborhood.

The company opened its South Lake Union campus starting in 2019, prior to the pandemic, but said at the time that it had decided to retain its Fremont office. These days, post-pandemic, the company maintains a hybrid work model, allowing employees to split their time between the office and remote work.

In Kirkland, the company grew its campus in 2016 but scrapped plans to further expand its footprint in 2023, amid larger cutbacks by Google and others.

Other major tech companies in the Fremont neighborhood include Adobe, Nvidia (through its acquisition of OctoAI), Brinc Drones, and Salesforce’s Tableau, which has reduced its presence in the neighborhood in recent years.

On the other hand, global health nonprofit PATH is moving its headquarters to Fremont, to a building previously occupied by Tableau, next to the Google campus.

“Fremont is still a highly desirable tech hub,” said Pete Hanning, executive director of the Fremont Chamber of Commerce, which is working to further establish the neighborhood as a location for tech companies.

GeekWire has been based in Fremont for more than a decade.

Redfin closed out 2024 with a healthy bump in revenue, but profits were lower as the company continues to adjust to its new agent pay model and “several restructurings” in the past year.

Revenue met expectations, increasing 12% in the fourth quarter and up 7% for the full year, the company reported. The company’s net loss per share was 29 cents, however, higher than investor estimates of around 23 cents per share, totaling more than $36 million for the quarter. During the same period a year ago, Redfin’s net loss was just under $30 million.

Losses were up in part due to the costs associated with transitioning to Redfin Next — the company’s new commission split model — which has brought in more new agents than anticipated. 

Redfin Next rolled out nationally in October and appears to be attracting a lot of interest. At the end of the year, the company had 1,927 lead agents — a 14% increase year-over-year — and that momentum has continued into 2025. As of last week, the company said, agent count topped 2,200, a boost of roughly 13% in less than two months.

During a call with investors on Feb. 27, Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman said the company has been pleased with the new hires, who are generally more experienced agents. “The rapid expansion of our sales force is just one of the ways that Redfin plans to go on the attack in 2025,” Kelman said. 

Despite the increased revenue and agent count, Redfin’s stock was down around 11% in after-hours trading.

Kelman hopes ‘painful’ restructuring will boost profits

Earlier this month, Zillow announced that it would pay Redfin $100 million for an exclusive rentals syndication agreement — a lucrative partnership for Redfin, but one that also resulted in significant layoffs in the company’s rentals division. 

“We’ve gone through several restructurings in 2024 and then we had an especially painful one at the beginning of 2025 because we wanted to put all the chips on the table on growth and to spend less on staffing,” Kelman said.

But the company plans to put those cost savings into a marketing campaign in the first quarter, Kelman said, specifically targeting sellers who are looking for lower listing fees during a period of economic uncertainty. 

Redfin is focused on growing market share in 2025, Kelman said, because he doesn’t expect home sales to make a significant recovery. By trimming staff and increasing the brokerage’s sales force, Kelman is expecting a positive EBITDA this year after a $26.5 million miss in 2024.

Private listings even less compelling in a slow market 

Asked to weigh in on the Clear Cooperation Policy and the movement toward more private listings, Kelman reiterated his position that pocket listings are bad for consumers. He also said the timing of the CCP debate is unusual since inventory is growing and listings are staying on the market longer.

“As the market softens, where it gets harder to sell a house… it just seems harder to make the argument that you want to debut a listing without getting maximum exposure,” Kelman said.

Key numbers

Revenue: $244.3 million, up 12% compared to the fourth quarter of 2023. For all of 2024, Redfin’s revenue was $1.04 billion, up 7% year-over-year.

Cash and cash equivalents: $124.7 million in the fourth quarter, down from $149.8 million at the end of 2023.

Net income/loss: A loss of $36.4 million, more than the $22.9 million loss at the end of 2023. For the full year, the net loss was $164.8 million, more than the $130 million loss in 2023.

Adjusted EBITDA (earnings before income, taxes, depreciation and amortization): A loss of $2.9 million in Q4, less than the loss of $13.5 million a year prior. For all of 2024, the loss was $26.5 million, an improvement over the $76.4 million loss in 2023.

Average number of lead agents: 1,927 at the end of 2024, up 14% from a year ago. It was also the third straight quarter of agent growth.

Transactions: 14,363 for the fourth quarter, up 7.7% compared to a year ago.

Site traffic: 43 million average monthly users, down 3% from a year ago.

Three veterans of Zillow Group who helped turn the Seattle real estate company into a tech powerhouse have joined forces to launch a new startup that relies on generative AI to help real estate agents be better at their jobs.

CEO Luis Poggi (former Zillow VP of product and engineering), board member Spencer Rascoff (Zillow co-founder and former CEO), and CTO Alex Kutner (former Zillow engineering leader) are the co-founders of HouseWhisper, which aims to use AI to help alleviate the administrative overload that bogs some agents down.

Seattle-based HouseWhisper emerged from stealth mode on Tuesday, and announced that it’s raised nearly $10 million in funding.

Poggi called buying a home one of the most emotional and important decisions people make in their lives, with real estate agents at the heart of the process.

“As agents become more and more successful, they also become buried with tons of admin tasks,” Poggi added.

HouseWhisper is a conversational AI that acts as the ultimate 24/7 personal assistant, helping agents stay organized with help on following up with clients, scheduling, CRM updates and more. Agents can call, text or send a voice memo to a number and interact with HouseWhisper’s AI as they would with any human assistant.

On the backend, the technology creates a transcript of the conversation, and HouseWhisper extracts useful information which can save the agent time and ultimately help the agent better connect with the client.

“Every agent would love to have an assistant. Not everyone has that because hiring people, managing people, training people is a lot of effort, and it’s expensive,” Poggi said. “We’re removing all of that. This is significantly cheaper than hiring a human and it’s already trained on real estate and everything that you do.”

See how an agent named Chrissy interacts with HouseWhisper AI in the video below:

HouseWhisper has been in beta for about eight months and is being used by over 4,000 agents nationwide. Poggi said adoption has been broad even for users who are less tech focused, because the conversational model allows agents to just call and talk.

The startup makes money through a subscription model, with different prices for different sized teams.

There are a number of AI-powered tools being used to speed and automate various tasks in the real estate industry, from generating leads to analyzing the market to virtual staging. Poggi said HouseWhisper is unique because of the conversational approach.

He also said HouseWhisper is a “really good compliment” to what his old employer is doing.

“We work with several Zillow teams and they love it,” Poggi said.

Rascoff, who recently took over as CEO of Match Group and its family of dating apps, spent nearly 15 years at Zillow, which he helped launch in 2005. He thinks the real estate industry is ready for a “smarter, more efficient way to work.”

“We see a future where AI-powered assistants are as essential to a real estate agent as their cell phone, helping agents stay connected with clients through better insight, personalization, and efficiency,” Rascoff said in a statement.

Rascoff worked with other ex-Zillow colleagues to launch a similar AI-powered startup called heyLibby, which aims to help owners of small and medium-sized businesses automate initial conversations with prospective clients using a chatbot.

Beyond Zillow, Poggi had prior experience at travel giant Expedia. Kutner spent two years at Convoy, the digital trucking marketplace that shut down in 2023.

HouseWhisper raised $6.7 million in a seed round led by Mayfield, with participation from Seattle-based PSL Ventures and Rascoff’s 75 and Sunny Ventures. A pre-seed round earlier in 2024 was led by PSL Ventures.

The fresh cash will be used to drive product development, team expansion, and AI enhancements. HouseWhisper also plans to introduce new AI solutions across the real estate industry for transaction coordinators, loan officers, and brokerages.

The company currently employs 15 people.

Related:

• Could Zillow buy Redfin? New rentals partnership brings real estate rivals closer together

This story originally appeared on Real Estate News.

While a new listings partnership between Redfin and Zillow is expected to benefit both companies in the long run, it comes at a cost for some Redfin employees.

In an SEC filing ahead of its fourth-quarter earnings report, Redfin announced plans to restructure its rentals segment — a move that will “eliminate certain employee roles” that support the rentals division. An estimated 450 positions will be cut between February and July 2025, and the restructuring is expected to be completed by the end of September.

Why now? The news follows the Feb. 11 announcement of a rentals-focused partnership agreement between Zillow and Redfin. According to a news release, Zillow — which reported 25% annual growth in its rentals business in the fourth quarter of 2024 — will become the exclusive provider of multifamily rental listings on Redfin and its owned rental sites, Rent.com and ApartmentGuide.com.

Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman said the agreement will allow his company to focus on other aspects of its business, including lending and title services, while giving “Redfin visitors access to one of the largest and fastest-growing databases of rental listings.” 

Zillow is paying Redfin $100 million to secure the exclusive agreement, while Redfin estimates it will incur between $18 million and $21 million in expenses to restructure its rentals segment.

Real Estate News reached out to Redfin for further details about the restructuring and layoffs and was told the company had no additional information to share.

Financial outlook: Redfin’s fourth quarter earnings release is scheduled for Thursday, Feb. 27 after the stock market closes. During its last earnings call, the company reported a small increase in revenue year-over-year, but also posted significant losses which it attributed to the expansion of its Redfin Next agent pay plan. 

Kelman said at the time that the program will ultimately strengthen the company’s sales force, providing a competitive advantage when the market improves, but he also apologized to shareholders for failing to make a profit last year. The rentals partnership announcement appears to have pleased investors, however, as Redfin stock was up more than 11% on Feb. 12.

A series of layoffs: This marks the third — and largest — round of layoffs at Redfin in seven months following other targeted cuts in January and August. 

Last month, 46 employees working primarily in managerial roles were let go, according to a statement provided to GeekWire. The August layoffs involved positions in the company’s Concierge service, with fewer than 100 people impacted.

The median asking rent for an apartment in downtown Seattle rose for the first time in 17 months, according to a new analysis by real estate company Redfin.

The bump of 2.5%, to median rents of $2,000, came in December, ahead of Amazon’s Jan. 1 recall of corporate and tech workers back to the office five days per week. But Redfin is watching to see what effect the mandate has on increases going forward.

Other reports cite an increase in rush-hour traffic and commute times since Amazon’s mandate, and employees who live outside the city could be looking for accommodations closer to Amazon offices.

Redfin’s analysis included median asking rent figures for newly listed units in apartment buildings with five or more units. The median is calculated based on a three-month period ending December 31, 2024.

Redfin’s border for downtown Seattle incorporates the central business district, the waterfront along Alaskan Way, First Hill, Pioneer Square, Belltown, the International District and Denny Triangle.

Among other nearby neighborhoods, Capitol Hill rents rose the most in December, climbing 7.2% year over year to $1,825, according to Redfin.

Rents in downtown Seattle have been a roller-coaster of ups and downs over the past five years. After climbing to nearly $2,500 prior to the pandemic in 2020, the median asking rent for downtown Seattle plummeted to $1,399 in February 2021 as the city’s tech-driven workforce transitioned to remote work.

When offices started to re-open, demand increased and the median rent rose back up to $3,118 in August 2022, according to Redfin. Since then, rents have fallen by roughly 36%, with Redfin crediting a major uptick in apartment construction.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy in September announced the decision to bring employees back to in-person work five days per week starting in January. A prior move to bring roughly 50,000 corporate and tech workers back for three days a week sparked a backlash among some employees, and that’s continued with the five-day call. But Jassy said the company was “going to return to being in the office the way we were before the onset of COVID.”

Redfin Senior Economist Sheharyar Bokhari said it’s too early to tell whether Amazon’s return-to-work policy affected the uptick in Seattle’s downtown rents in December, given that most workers already live within commuting distance of their office.

“Seattle has been building more new apartments than almost any metro outside of the Sun Belt these past few years. That has helped keep rents in check — even after workers returned to hybrid or full-time office work following the pandemic,” Bokhari said. “But as new construction levels off and workers from large companies like Amazon increasingly expect their staff to work daily in downtown offices, rents may start ticking up in Seattle’s inner-ring neighborhoods where commuting is made easier.”

Seattle-based real estate company Zillow Group laid off an unspecified number of employees, the company confirmed Friday.

According to a statement from Zillow to GeekWire, the cuts impacted roles on reorganized agent software and advertising teams:

“As part of our ongoing commitment to working with our agent customers to offer a digitized and integrated experience to more movers in more markets, we are focused on the long-term growth of the products and business solutions we offer to agents. We feel as confident as ever about this strategy, and we continue to prioritize investment in the areas that will most benefit our agent customers.

“This week we’ve made some changes to the organizational structure of several agent software and advertising teams, resulting in the elimination of certain roles. We are grateful to the impacted employees for their contributions to Zillow and are ensuring their transition is as smooth as possible. While decisions like these are never easy and never our first choice, we believe responsibly managing our resources has positioned our teams well to deliver for consumers, agent customers and the broader real estate industry in 2025.”

The move comes at the same time that Seattle-based real estate competitor Redfin made another round of job cuts, laying off 46 employees. A Redfin spokesperson said those reductions affected primarily managers in headquarters, program, and field leadership roles.

Amid a tough real estate market, mortgage rates reached 6.93% this week, the highest level since July. Home listings are up, but partly due to unsold homes sitting on the market, Redfin reported. In one bright spot for buyers, affordability didn’t get worse in 2024.

Zillow reported revenue of $581 million and adjusted earnings of $127 million during third quarter earnings in November.

In August, Zillow named longtime executive Jeremy Wacksman as new CEO, taking over from co-founder Rich Barton.

Redfin laid off 46 employees on Thursday, in another round of job cuts at the Seattle-based real estate company.

A spokesperson confirmed the layoffs, which affected “primarily managers in our headquarters, program, and field leadership roles,” according to the company’s statement to GeekWire.

No agents were impacted and the company said it is “continuing to aggressively hire agents.”

Redfin employs more than 4,000 people.

The company has had multiple rounds of cuts over the past two years as it navigates a tough real estate market. Mortgage rates reached 6.93% this week, the highest level since July. Home listings are up, but partly due to unsold homes sitting on the market, Redfin reported. In one bright spot for buyers, affordability didn’t get worse in 2024.

In 2022, responding to a housing market slowdown, Redfin laid off staff and ditched its iBuying program. It also laid off 4% of its workforce, or 201 employees, in April 2023, and did another layoff in August 2024.

Redfin reported revenue growth of 3% to $270 million in its most recent quarter. Net loss came in at $33 million, up from $19 million in the year-ago period.

Real estate industry changes from the National Association of Realtors settlement, including a substantial shift in the agent commission structure, went into effect last year.

Redfin last year rolled out Redfin Next, a new compensation model for its agents that eliminated salaries and has expanded to more cities.

[This story originally appeared on Real Estate News.]

BOSTON — Compass CEO Robert Reffkin has been vocal in his opposition to the National Association of Realtors’ Clear Cooperation Policy, which requires properties to be listed on the Multiple Listing Service within a day of being publicly marketed.

Which may be why people packed the conference room at the NAR NXT conference on Friday, buzzing with more anticipation than one might expect for a conversation about the future of multiple listing services.

The panel was packed too: Reffkin was joined by the CEOs of the nation’s two largest MLSs — Art Carter of CRMLS and Brian Donnellan of Bright MLS, who moderated the session — Errol Samuelson, Zillow’s chief industry development officer; and Kymber Lovett-Menkiti, co-owner and president of Keller Williams Capital Properties, a KW regional director and board member of Bright MLS.

Reffkin did not hold back when offering his vision of where the MLS is headed: “My view is that Zillow is going to be the MLS. It’s only a matter of time.”

And the crowd, which had burst into spontaneous applause at several points in the discussion, instead just murmured.

“What, no clap for that?” Reffkin said.

Samuelson, who had multiple applause lines, embodied the home search portal’s evolution from outsider to insider on a panel at NAR’s biggest event. It was an evolution that Donnellan remarked on, as did Reffkin — who also commented on Zillow’s rise to dominance, which he characterized as a self-inflicted wound on the industry.

Samuelson, for his part, reiterated Zillow’s support for the “incredibly pro-consumer” MLS system, a “two-sided marketplace with equal access to information.” Zillow once operated without MLS data, getting listings information directly from brokers. That’s not the future they’re looking toward, Samuelson told Real Estate News after the panel.

“The best agents win on skill, not information asymmetry,” Samuelson said during the panel, to loud applause.

The future of MLS: Cooperation, competition, consolidation

MLSs were “built on cooperation and compensation,” said Donnellan. With offers of compensation removed from the MLS per NAR’s deal to settle commissions lawsuits, can “we live with just one C?”

The answer was a resounding yes. “Data is more than enough to make an MLS worth it,” said Lovett-Menkiti. “Brokers need information.”

“And my job is to provide it,” chimed in Carter.

“The MLS is the biggest gift that the brokerage community has ever given the consumer and we need to double down on the cooperation aspect of that in order for our brokerages to really thrive,” Carter said. ” And I think the multiple listing service is the one place that can bring all that information together, and where brokers work together.”

Samuelson took it a step further: “I’d like to see every MLS do a data share with every other MLS, then brokers have a choice.”

Carter didn’t skip a beat in replying, and got his own round of applause. “Brokerages should compete on service and price. MLSs should compete on service and price. They shouldn’t compete on whether or not I have the listing content for all of California. I should be able to have the listing content for all of California. Let me go out and service the brokerage community, and the best MLS will win at the end of the day.”

Reffkin, meanwhile, said he supports a strong MLS but argued that data should be offered in a more controlled way, saying information about days on market and price drops are “killers of value.”

“If buyers get that information, sellers should know more about buyers,” he said, like how long they’ve been searching for a house and how many offers they’ve made.

More power to the sellers

Reffkin’s theme was that sellers should have more control over their experience.

“I think we’re not treating the homeowners as clients,” he said, yet MLSs only exist because of seller listings. And homeowners deserve an environment with more options for how their information is shared. He resisted the urge to mention Clear Cooperation by name, but referred obliquely to the implications of its end. “I think competition for homeowners will ultimately give them better experience and more options.”

Reffkin also expressed frustration with listing agent attribution, or the lack of it.

“That attribution is something we fight for,” Carter said. “I think it is the multiple listing services that should be defending the listing agent on the listing, and that is something that we at the CLS level actively do.”

After the panel was over, and after Reffkin held court with agents and other audience members who had gathered for photos to capture the event, Real Estate News asked Reffkin about his crusade against Clear Cooperation. He says it’s about sellers’ rights. But for a company that is leaning into the idea of private listings, it could also be seen as self-serving.

Reffkin’s answer: “I think the concept that we’re debating, of whether or not homeowners have a choice, is beyond me.”

Stepping into work never looked this good.

A digital “moment of zen” has taken shape at a downtown Seattle office building, using cutting-edge technology and AI tools to showcase iconic photography from around the Pacific Northwest.

“The Portal” is a new 180-degree art-filled entryway at the redeveloped lobby of One Union Square, a 36-story skyscraper built in 1981. Visitors entering and exiting the building are treated to massive images showcasing the region’s natural beauty and its built environment, from Mount Rainier to the Space Needle.

The Portal is 14-feet high and 42-feet wide, with walls and ceilings lined with 248 high-resolution LED panels that offer super high image resolution. For comparison, a high-end HDTV performs at 4K wide, while the Portal offers the equivalent of 13K wide, maintaining color and sharpness from any angle around the entryway.

Conceived by building owner Washington Holdings, the Portal was developed by Bellevue, Wash.-based Lightspeed Design, a longtime visual effects company that performs a variety of creative and technical work.

“This is a really exciting thing, because it’s embedded in the building. It’s part of the building,” said Chris Ward, president of Lightspeed Design, during a recent GeekWire tour of the display.

Lightspeed previously worked with the Space Needle to enhance a live New Year’s Eve fireworks display with a layer of augmented reality effects.

The Portal doesn’t just feature static images blown up to fill the desired space. Throughout a roughly 45-minute iteration of a 50-image “show,” panning and scanning across images is achieved in extreme detail with the help of artificial intelligence. Lightspeed relies on tools from Topaz Labs, makers of photo and video editing software.

“The AI has allowed us to do something new,” Ward said. “We would have done this years ago, and it would just look different. This is now allowing us to maintain the integrity of the original photography as it gets blown up to 13K.”

At one point, an aerial image shot high over Lake Union zooms way in on some of the houseboats and people swimming below, creating surprisingly sharp subcomponents of the main image.

“Mostly, it’s enhancing what’s there, and interpolating a blob into a smaller, sharper blob,” said Lightspeed art director Bob Mueller. “It doesn’t know what it’s looking at for the most part, but it knows through millions of images that it’s been trained on what this kind of blob should have looked like.”

Ward called AI a valuable tool that supports the artists and actually enhances their work.

“It’s not actually in competition with people,” he said. “I think people view AI in this suspicious manner in the creative community.”

Alongside photographs and videos there are real-time simulations mixed in, such as randomly generated sky and cloud formations. The simulations accurately update the position of the sun (and at night, stars) for Seattle’s exact day and time at The Portal’s exact longitude and latitude.

Washington Holdings has invested more than $120 million in upgrades to tenant-facing spaces of One and Two Union Square. The current renovation of One Union is by Seattle-based architecture firm GGLO.

The Portal does not produce any sound, and the only type in the display is credits to the artists and photographers. The Union Square website contains a list of those whose work is involved, with organizations such as the City of Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, NASA, MOHAI, Seattle Public Library, and the Space Needle granting usage permissions.

From the courtyard outside, especially at night, the entryway could be viewed as a dynamic new piece of public art in the city.

Washington Holdings CEO Craig Wrench said the goal was “to create a visual, and perhaps unexpected, moment in the building where tenants and guests might be moved in a positive way as they passed by or through it.”

Standing in The Portal, between the glass exterior and interior walls of One Union Square, I watched as office workers came and went past the immersive display. Some moved through it heads down on phones or hurriedly to their next appointment. Others clearly took in the few seconds of whatever image was onscreen during their passing — the Blue Angels flying overhead; a crashing coastal wave; an owl in a forest; fireworks bursting over the Space Needle.

“Even if they don’t consciously see it, they’ll subconsciously see something of beauty,” Mueller said of those passing through.

Keep scrolling for more photos:

Seattle-based home-inspection services startup Inspectify raised $5.3 million in new funding.

Founded in 2019, the company provides inspection software and a booking platform for home, property, and rental inspections. It aggregates data from each inspection and aims to replace static PDF reports.

The startup serves about 250 enterprise clients across real estate brokerages and investors, property managers, construction lenders, insurance carriers, and mortgage services.

Inspectify has raised $23 million to date and employs 59 people.

Co-founder and CEO Josh Jensen provided some additional company updates and highlights in an email exchange with GeekWire on Wednesday:

• The fresh cash came predominantly from Munich Re Ventures, which previously invested in Inspectify’s Series A. The firm becomes the startup’s largest external shareholder and Managing Director Matt McElhattan, who has been a board observer for the past few years, will become a full Inspectify board member.
• Jensen said “business is starting to pick up steam in segments outside of the real estate transaction” and Inspectify is forecasted to end the year with twice the annual revenue/gross profit compared to last year.
• Jensen said Inspectify is forecasting to become cash flow positive next year.

Jensen is a former Flyhomes exec and a long-time residential real estate home flipper. He is joined by CTO Denis Bellavance, who previously co-founded meal delivery startup Peach and spent time at Zillow, Loftium, and Amazon.

Zillow says users of its AI-powered residential real-estate search feature will be able reference additional criteria when searching for homes using natural language, including commute time, schools, nearby points of interest, and affordability.

It’s part of a broader competition among major real estate portals to roll out new artificial intelligence capabilities. Others including Redfin and Realtor.com have introduced a variety of AI features of their own over the past couple of years, including AI assistants and other capabilities in addition to search tools. Some real estate startups such as Flyhomes are making AI search a key value proposition.

With its latest update, the company says people searching for homes on its portal will have additional options. Examples cited by the company include commute time (“Homes 30 min drive from Millennium Park”), points of interest (“Apartments near Denver Union Station”), and schools (“3-bedroom houses near Roosevelt High School.”)

Zillow released the first version of its AI home search in January 2023.

Rich Barton, the Zillow Group co-founder and co-executive chair, said in a recent interview with GeekWire that Zillow and other major residential real estate portals haven’t yet found a “magic bullet” in their AI features for users.

“We haven’t really seen anything really break through there yet, but I’m 100% certain we will,” Barton said, as part of a larger discussion with new Zillow Group CEO Jeremy Wacksman, who succeeded Barton in the role.

Zillow Group named a new CEO, longtime company executive Jeremy Wacksman, announcing that co-founder and two-time CEO Rich Barton will be shifting to the new role of co-executive chair of the real estate media and technology company, joining co-founder Lloyd Frink in the role.

Wacksman, 47, with a background in both engineering and business, is a veteran of companies including Microsoft and Procter & Gamble who has been at Zillow Group for more than 15 years, serving in roles as chief marketing officer, president of the company’s flagship Zillow brand, and since early 2021 as its chief operating officer.

In an interview on the GeekWire Podcast about the transition, Barton said the company has been preparing for this leadership transition since starting to organize much of the company around Wacksman three years ago.

At the same time, Zillow has been repositioning itself as a housing “Super App” that integrates services for home buying, selling, and renting, effectively digitizing key parts of the real estate process, and helping people move.

“The strategy is working really well,” Barton said. “The business is in great shape. The top line is growing nicely. The profits are growing nicely. The outlook is good. So the sun is out, and that is the time to make these kinds of moves. I couldn’t be more excited by what’s going on.”

Wacksman, joining Barton on the podcast, said he plans to stay the course as CEO.

“This is a reflection that things are working, and that we’re excited to now continue to grow and continue to deliver against what we’ve been doing, which is the result of the last couple years of hard work during what’s been a really challenging macro-environment,” Wacksman said.

Among other things, Wacksman and Barton are both big believers in the benefits of remote work.

Although the company’s largest office is in Seattle, Zillow transitioned fully to a remote-first approach during the pandemic and considers the cloud, not Seattle, its headquarters. The company has employees in all 50 states, Wacksman said, and more than half of its workforce lives more than 50 miles from their office spaces.

The CEO transition came as Zillow Group announced second-quarter revenue of $572 million, up 13%. The company said it was the eighth consecutive quarter that its results have outperformed the residential real estate industry. 

Zillow Group posted $134 million in adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, due primarily to higher-than expected residential revenue. The company’s net loss for the second quarter was $17 million on a GAAP basis, an improvement over the $35 million net loss posted in the same quarter a year ago.

Zillow stock was up more than 12% in after-hours trading on Wednesday.

Barton, 57, said he will remain involved in Zillow Group to support Wacksman and the leadership team, but plans to take the extra time focus his energies on other boards and responsibilities. Barton is a board member at Netflix, Qurate Retail Group, and Artsy.

The announcement concludes Barton’s second stint as Zillow Group CEO, five years after he returned in 2019 to lead the company through what was then an ambitious plan to double down on the business of buying and selling homes.

As it turned out, Barton ended up discontinuing the Zillow Offers business in 2021, recognizing the realities of the market well before many similar “iBuying” ventures pulled the plug. It was a difficult process that included laying off 2,000 people, or 25% of the company, but gave Zillow room for another reinvention.

A serial entrepreneur known for his role in founding companies including Expedia, Glassdoor, and Trover, he said he doesn’t plan to start another company.

Referencing a teaser page that he and Frink posted when starting Zillow almost 20 years ago, inviting people to join them in a revolution, he said, “You won’t see any mysterious web pages from me.”

Listen to the podcast above, or subscribe to GeekWire in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Despite its significance in the world of artificial intelligence, the Allen Institute for AI (AI2) can be tough to find in its current nondescript home on the northeast side of Lake Union in Seattle. That’s about to change.

AI2 has leased a full floor in the new Northlake Commons building, in a high-profile spot just up the road from its current home, according to an announcement from the partnership behind the project, Seattle developer Hess Callahan Grey Group, San Francisco-based Spear Street Capital, and the Dunn Lumber Family.

The mass-timber building, at 3800 Latona Ave NE, is perched on a slope overlooking the water, adjacent to the Burke-Gilman Trail, a short bike ride or walk from the University of Washington or AI2’s current location.

Responding to an inquiry from GeekWire about the lease, AI2 said it will have about 200 employees in the building to start. AI2 isn’t yet saying if it will expand to this space and keep its current office, or move entirely to this new building.

AI2 leased 50,000 square feet. A move-in date hasn’t been announced.

It’s part of what appears to be an emerging AI corridor in Seattle. Santa Clara-based Collaborative Robotics, for example, recently opened its own Seattle office for its Foundation Models AI research team in a nearby building.

AI2, founded by the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, has been led for the past year by Ali Farhadi, who rejoined the institute in July 2023, succeeding Oren Etzioni as CEO, after leading Apple’s machine learning initiatives.

The institute released its Open Language Model, or OLMo, in February, part of a larger effort to bring more transparency to the rise of generative AI models. It won Innovation of the Year at the 2024 GeekWire Awards.

Amenities at Northlake Commons include a plaza with a view of Lake Union, a bike room with lockers and showers, private roof decks, and a paddleboard locker room with access to water activities. A bioswale filters up to 2.6 million gallons of stormwater runoff annually, helping to protect the lake and surrounding area.

General contractor Swinerton constructed the building, which was designed by architect Weber Thompson. James Yalowitz from Kidder Mathews, represented AI2 in the deal. Jacob Thurber of First Western Properties handles retail leasing. Lloyd Low and Joe Gowan of JLL are handling office and life science leasing.

The Puget Sound Business Journal previously reported on the AI2 lease.

• WeWork said Monday that it would assume leases at locations in Seattle at Holyoke Building, Hawk Tower, and 1201 3rd Ave, and in Bellevue, Wash., at Bellevue Place and Lincoln Square. A “lease assumption,” as it’s known in commercial real estate, involves negotiating with a landlord and filing a court motion.
• WeWork previously announced plans to hold onto locations in Seattle at 1448 NW Market St.; 1600 7th Ave.; 1099 Stewart St.; and 3120 139th Ave. SE and 10885 NE 4th St. in Bellevue.
• The company, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last fall, said it has determined a path forward at over 97% of its global, wholly-owned lease portfolio, reducing total rent commitments by over $11 billion.

[This story originally appeared on Real Estate News.]

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — When looking toward Zillow’s future, CEO and co-founder Rich Barton emphasized the company’s tech-influenced past — and tech-heavy present — while speaking at the T3 Leadership Summit.

“Our roots, our genes are back at Microsoft,” he told the audience, referring to his early experience working at the software giant during the ’90s. “So we know and love the super geeky people, and we know how to create an environment where they thrive.”

A digital, integrated Zillow — with an agent focus

Barton discussed Zillow’s efforts to expand its digital offerings and diversify its revenue streams through acquisitions of products popular among agents. But expanding Zillow’s focus beyond buyer leads is not coincidental — the industry continues to move in a direction where technology plays an increasingly important role, he explained. 

In that future, Zillow needs agents as much as it needs consumers.

Barton said the company has made strategic decisions “in order to really affect the kind of digital change we knew in our hearts and in our brains that needed to happen in the real estate industry,” he said, explaining that purchases of companies like ShowingTime and Follow Up Boss allowed Zillow “to move down the funnel towards the transaction.”

Notably, Barton did not mention the oft-messaged “housing super app” concept — though he did allude to it while speaking about Zillow’s efforts to automate and digitize the home purchase transaction. 

“We’re not just investing in the digital, integrated Zillow — which is kind of our little walled garden — we see a massive opportunity to digitize and offer an integrated set of services and tools platform for the industry as a whole.” 

He also noted that more than half of Zillow’s $2 billion in revenue comes from streams other than its Premier Agent business. And expect to see further integration into agents’ day-to-day business, he said, via new features planned for Follow Up Boss.

“Think about how much better Follow Up Boss is going to get when it’s making smarter and smarter suggestions. It will basically become a co-pilot for agents,” Barton said, explaining that the system will perform duties like finding listings for agents and nudging agents with reminders and other actionable items.

‘Resist the urge to chaos’

Barton also discussed the sweeping changes coming to the industry and some of the confusion surrounding the NAR settlement. “We should resist the urge to chaos,” he said to the crowd, suggesting that it’s better to “keep our head down and keep our hands up” in moments of change or uncertainty.

He highlighted Zillow’s efforts to engage and inform consumers of the changing real estate world and pointed audience members to Zillow’s “Real Estate Rights for Consumers” — an effort which also doubles as a public commitment to buyer representation and transparency in the industry. 

Barton offered some guiding principles via an acronym, ARC, which he said stood for access, representation and compensation. He added that “free, fair, transparent access to listings” is not only a cornerstone of Zillow’s ethos, but something that makes the U.S. residential real estate model unique. 

“It is an unbelievable asset of this industry that long ago we all decided to cooperate to share listings with each other,” he said, garnering an applause. “Most countries do not have anywhere near the kind of transparency for consumers and professionals alike that we have in the U.S.”

‘Kill the squirrel’

But Barton also alluded to his time as the young CEO of Expedia during the 9/11 attacks. “There was speculation that no one would ever travel again,” he said to the audience. “You know, it was a pretty scary time.” Eventually, travel came back, he explained. 

Another scary time? The pandemic. But “what happened to the industry during the first six months?” Barton asked. “Home run. Probably the biggest home run in our careers.” 

Barton also shared a story from when he was growing up in Connecticut and learning how to drive. 

“I swerved to avoid a squirrel and almost had an accident,” he explained. “And my dad took a deep breath, paused, and said, ‘Son, kill the squirrel.’ I would say it’s good advice. In a chaotic time, what are you going to do? Keep your head down and deliver for your customers. Keep on driving.”

WeWork is looking to hold onto another location in Seattle, negotiating new terms with its landlord and filing a court motion Monday to remain in the 15th and Market building in the Ballard neighborhood.

The “lease assumption,” as it’s known in commercial real estate, comes in the final stages of a strategic restructuring after the one-time co-working giant filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last fall. The company, once valued at $47 billion, says it has been making progress in a variety of negotiations related to its real estate portfolio.

WeWork says it has saved over $8 billion in total future rent commitments (a more than 40% reduction) and has reached a path forward at 90% of its buildings globally. The company has assumed 40 leases across its portfolio so far, and more are expected to be announced in the coming weeks.

A WeWork location at 1600 Seventh Ave. in Seattle was among eight lease assumptions announced in March.

The Ballard WeWork at 1448 NW Market St. opened in 2019 as a 76,500-square-foot space spread over two floors. It shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic in June 2021, and then reopened in March 2022.

WeWork still operates seven co-working locations in the Seattle area. Portland-based co-working company Centrl Office is taking over the former WeWork space in Kelly-Springfield Building on Capitol Hill this summer.

Peter Greenspan, global head of real estate at WeWork, called the Ballard location one of his company’s most popular locations in the Seattle area.

“It has recently seen an increase in demand from hybrid workers who are looking for workplaces closer to their homes,” Greenspan said. “We are grateful for Martin Selig Real Estate’s collaboration on this new agreement, and we are excited to continue providing our Seattle members with best-in-class workspaces and solutions at this location.”

Lease assumptions are subject to court approval.

PATH, the global health nonprofit, is moving to a new headquarters space in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood after 15 years in South Lake Union.

PATH announced a lease agreement Thursday with real estate development group Hess Callahan Grey Group to take over the entire 52,000-square-foot space in the West Dock building at 437 N. 34th St. in 2025.

Located on the Burke-Gilman Trail with views of the Lake Washington Ship Canal, and next to offices for Google and Adobe, West Dock was once home to Sound Mind & Body Gym. But the building was purchased and renovated in 2014 and turned into office space for Tableau, as the maker of data visualization software was growing quickly in Fremont at the time.

The new PATH facility will be home to more than 200 Seattle-area employees and serve as a flagship for more than 3,000 global PATH employees. The nonprofit has more than 47 offices across 24 countries.

PATH’s HQ was previously located at 2201 Westlake Ave. The new location will continue to house the organization’s laboratory and product engineering lab, in addition to open-concept collaboration spaces for meetings and events.

“PATH staff envisioned a space that ignites creativity and fosters innovation — and feels distinctly ‘Seattle,'” PATH President and CEO Nikolaj Gilbert said in a news release. “Our global officers are more than workplaces — they’re extensions of local communities and sanctuaries for team members and partners alike. We already feel at home in Fremont and can’t wait to introduce our staff and friends around the world to the neighborhood.”

Tableau, now owned by Salesforce, has given up office space in the area in recent years but still maintains a sizable presence.

• Revenue was down 2% year-over-year to $218.1 million, while net loss of $22.9 million was down from $61.9 million in the year-ago period. Redfin missed slightly on revenue expectations and beat earnings estimates.
• For the full year, Redfin’s revenue was down in 2023 by 11% to $976.7 million, while net losses shrunk to $130 million from $321.1 million.
• The housing market appeared to bounce back late last year but high mortgage rates continue to keep buyers on the sidelines.
• “In a dreadful housing market, Redfin got more efficient in the fourth quarter, again improving gross margins and operating margins, even as we laid the foundation for meaningful long-term growth,” Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman said in a statement.

Related: Redfin targeted in new commissions suit blasting buyer agents via RealEstateNews.com.

Zillow is embracing the new Apple Vision Pro as the ultimate way to experience interactive home tours, launching its Zillow Immerse experience in the App Store.

The Seattle-based real estate technology company called Apple’s spatial computing headset “the next best thing to being there in person” for home shoppers who want to check out virtual walkthroughs and 3D floor plans.

Zillow Immerse was designed specifically for the Vision Pro, utilizing Zillow’s AI-powered Listing Showcase listings, which feature scrolling “hero” images, room-by-room photo organization, interactive floor plans and 3D tours. Using an AI-generated floor plan as a guide, users wearing the headset can take a virtual walk down hallways, poke into rooms and survey a home’s layout.

According to Zillow research, 74% of prospective buyers believe 3D tours help them get a better feel for a home’s space than static photos, and 70% wish that more listings had 3D tours available.

Pre-orders for the Apple Vision Pro start Friday, with a starting price of $3,500.

Related:

• Zillow taps into AI to power new immersive features in virtual home tours
• Microsoft productivity apps and Copilot AI coming to Apple Vision Pro at launch

Co-working giant WeWork is closing a signature Seattle location amid its efforts to restructure and survive its recent bankruptcy filing.

The global office space company will close its space in Capitol Hill’s Kelly-Springfield development on 11th Avenue at the end of February.

“As part of WeWork’s strategic restructuring efforts, we have made the difficult decision to end our operations at Kelly-Springfield,” a WeWork spokesperson said. “We have offered affected members the option to relocate, with our support, to our other Seattle locations and deeply apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.”

Capitol Hill Seattle Blog first reported the news last week.

WeWork has been talking to its roughly 500 landlords globally and has amended 38 leases to achieve roughly $1.5 billion in long-term savings through rent reduction, downsized leased space, shortened lease duration, or sometimes early termination of leases, the company told The Wall Street Journal.

WeWork operates seven other locations in the Seattle area, and the company had no other updates at this time about those spaces. The spokesperson said the city “continues to be a priority market for WeWork.”

The historic, five-story Kelly-Springfield location near the Pike/Pine corridor at 1525 11th Ave., was once home to REI and later a Value Village thrift store. It opened as WeWork in January 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic upended office work. CHS Blog reported that there were once plans to have space in the building for around 1,300 workers, including the fourth floor dedicated to space for Microsoft.

“Surrounded by bars, restaurants, and countless entertainment options, this vibrant workspace offers an oasis of productivity for teams of all sizes,” the WeWork website says of the space, which featured “light-filled lounges, modern conference rooms, and sleek private offices.”

Five Iron Golf, a high-tech indoor golf experience backed by Seattle hip-hop star Macklemore, opened on the ground floor of the Kelly-Springfield building in March 2022. Entrepreneur Robbie Cape’s sustainable chicken sandwich restaurant Mt. Joy opened just across the street in December.

GeekWire reported in December on other co-working spaces in Seattle and how they are faring post-pandemic and in the wake of WeWork’s downfall. The Cloud Room, just a couple blocks away from WeWork on 11th Avenue, is “doing better than it ever did,” owner Liz Dunn said at the time.

Co-working makes up a very small portion of the commercial real estate market, accounting for just 3.4% in the U.S. and 1.2% in Seattle. While overall office demand in Seattle is down 67% versus pre-COVID levels (2018-19), demand for flex space is actually up 3.2% year over year, according to commercial real estate technology platform VTS.

But the bigger draw for many who visited an open house Saturday afternoon was the history of the place. This was the home that Jeff Bezos rented in the mid-1990s to launch the company that became Amazon.com.

“I just wanted to see where it all started,” said Manan Patel, an Amazon employee who was one of numerous people with connections to the company who were among the steady stream of visitors at the open house.

The listing team made sure that the home’s history was clear to anyone who visited. Tyler Li, who works for the listing agents Lin Shen and Mina Zhang of Sea to Sky Realty, went to great lengths to create a life-sized replica of the blue “Amazon.com” sign that can be seen behind Bezos in historical photos of the Amazon founder.

The idea that such an influential company came from such humble beginnings is “a very inspiring story,” Li said. By promoting the house’s history, he said, the listing team wanted not only to increase foot traffic to help in the sale of the house, but also to share the story with everyone.

For the open house this weekend, the replica of the sign was placed on a workbench in the garage along with a small collection of framed photos and newspaper articles.

The listing for the home reads, “Welcome to the birthplace of Amazon. Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in the humble garage of this West Bellevue house in 1994.”

It notes that the home was “rebuilt in 2001 to offer modern comfort and style.”

That renovation more than two decades ago makes it tough to pinpoint exactly where Bezos was sitting at the time, but that didn’t seem to matter to those who visited. Many stopped next to the display in the garage to have their photos taken, some of them leaving without going inside to see the rest of the home.

At an asking price of nearly $2.3 million, the home is also a symbol of the price appreciation and shrinking affordability that has accompanied the Seattle-area tech boom over the past decade, driven by the growth of Amazon and other companies. The house last sold for $1.53 million in 2019, up from $620,000 a decade prior.

Two more pieces of historical trivia:

• The home previously featured an oversized mailbox, believed to have been used by Bezos and early employees to accommodate book catalogs they received to help stock their fledgling online bookstore. The mailbox has been replaced, and appears to have been lost to history.
• When Bezos initially rented the home, the company was known as Cadabra, a reference to “abracadabra.” The company changed its name to Amazon after people on the phone misheard it as “cadaver.” 

With a well-kept backyard and vaulted interior ceilings on a quiet suburban street, it should serve as a very nice home for whomever ends up buying it this time. But of course, Bezos has significantly upgraded his digs over the past three decades. The billionaire announced last year that he was officially moving to Miami, and reportedly bought a $79 million mansion in Florida last fall.

Zillow Group and ShowingTime have announced a new lawsuit against the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service (ARMLS) and Wisconsin’s Metro Multiple Listing Service (Metro MLS) over what the tech giant claims is an unfair and anticompetitive practice that freezes out ShowingTime in favor of a proprietary, MLS-developed tour appointment tool.

Who is involved? The suit, filed on Dec. 22, names ARMLS, Metro MLS and MLS Aligned as defendants. The Arizona and Wisconsin MLSs, along with five other MLSs, are part of the MLS Aligned network that serves tens of thousands of agents across the country.

The other member MLSs in the MLS Aligned network — RMLS in Oregon, Northern Nevada Regional MLS, UtahRealEstate.com, MLSListings in Northern California and BeachesMLS in Florida — were not listed as defendants in Zillow’s complaint.

In both Zillow Group’s formal legal complaint and a blog post from Chief Industry Development Officer Errol Samuelson, the company singles out ARMLS and Metro MLS for their plans to remove ShowingTime integration and only provide agents the use of a competing product developed by MLS Aligned. 

What does the suit allege? One of the functions of MLS Aligned is to develop products for agents in partner MLSs. The suit targets one of the network’s specific products, Aligned Showings, which was initially offered alongside ShowingTime. 

Zillow Group alleges that “rather than competing on the merits,” MLS Aligned and its members conspired to remove the ShowingTime integration and “create a monopoly in their regions for their own showing management platform.” The complaint, which describes how Zillow offered ShowingTime access for free, refers to the removal as “anticompetitive and exclusionary.”

Zillow’s complaint also noted that ARMLS removed the ShowingTime integration in its member portal on Dec. 27 while Metro MLS would do so in February.  

What did Zillow say? In his blog post, Samuelson provides additional context to the action and said the company had tried to work with the two MLSs on a solution before filing suit. 

Zillow Group “made numerous attempts to convince these two MLSs to keep the seamless ShowingTime integration active as an additional option for their agent members, as other MLSs in the consortium have done,” said Samuelson, but ARMLS and Metro MLS “declined all offered alternatives and resolutions, leaving their agent members with no choice.”

Samuelson describes MLSs as “rulemaking bodies and local monopolies” which have a particularly important duty to avoid conflicts of interest. He said that Zillow is taking this action to protect individual agents’ choice to decide which products and digital tools they use for their business.

A new company will make its nest in Seattle’s “Hawk Tower” in the new year.

Seattle-based business and technology firm Slalom Consulting is moving its headquarters into the glass skyscraper at 255 King St. in January. The building will be renamed “Slalom Hawk Tower.”

The name replaces “Avalara Hawk Tower,” after the Seattle sales tax automation company, which opened a new headquarters in the building in the Pioneer Square neighborhood in February 2018.

With views across the parking lot to Lumen Field, where the Seattle Seahawks, Sounders and OL Reign play, Avalara initially occupied the top six floors of the building and more than 114,000 square feet. The company, which was taken private in a deal last year, said it will continue to occupy four floors.

Slalom did not say how much square footage it would be leasing, but said its footprint would span “multiple floors,” with the ability to expand in the future based on evolving needs.

The company is moving from the Exchange Building at 821 2nd Ave, where it said the expiration of its current lease provided an opportunity to reassess the requirements of its hybrid-work culture and “to consider what is the best fit to support connection, collaboration, and accessibility for our teams.”

Slalom provides tech-related services in various industries to clients across the globe including Alaska Airlines, Allstate, eBay, Hyatt, Microsoft, REI, and others. Citing “significant shifts” within its industry in September, the company cut 7% of its workforce, or about 900 employees.

Slalom recently made Fortune’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” list for the eighth consecutive year.

“Slalom is proud of our Seattle heritage and commitment to the Pacific Northwest community,” Slalom President Tony Rojas said in a statement. “We’re excited to continue managing our global and Seattle market business from the downtown core.”

[This story originally appeared on Real Estate News.]

Redfin is on the “right side of history” in the wake of the verdict against the National Association of Realtors and others in the Sitzer/Burnett commissions lawsuit, CEO Glenn Kelman told investors during the company’s earnings call Thursday.

Kelman said Redfin is uniquely positioned among brokerages to thrive in the face of “massive disruption,” in part because of its decision to break from NAR last month, but also because of its customer focus. 

“Redfin has long counseled our agents to support any fee a listing customer wants to pay a buyer’s agent,” Kelman said. And though the company was named as a defendant in a new commission lawsuit filed this week, “we have very good defenses,” he said.

Kelman told investors that the verdict in the Sitzer/Burnett case may dramatically reduce the number of buyer’s agents and potentially “lead to a revolution in our industry, not just reform,” he said.

“Today, if someone is trying to buy a Redfin listing, we route them to a buyer’s agent but we may instead say we will route them to the listing agent,” he predicted.

“Hiring a buyer’s agent is a choice,” said Kelman, who also touted the company’s self-service technology for buyers and ability to market properties directly to consumers, “taking market share from other brokerages.”

Redfin’s earnings improved, which Kelman credited to cost-cutting efforts. “Our third-quarter results from continuing operations show how much more efficient we’ve become over the last year: revenue declined year over year by 12%, but gross profits increased by 8%, and adjusted EBITDA improved by $20 million,” he said.

Key numbers

Revenue: $269 million, down 12% compared to the third quarter of 2022 and down $7 million from Q2 of this year.

Cash and cash equivalents: $125.8 million, down from $232.2 million at the end of 2022, but up slightly from $118.8 million at the end of Q2.

Gross profit: $98.3 million, up 8% year-over-year, and down just slightly from the previous quarter.

Net loss: $19 million, an improvement over the previous quarter’s net loss of $27.4 million, and significantly better than the net loss of $90.2 million in the third quarter of 2022.

EBITDA: $7.65 million, a $59 million improvement over the third quarter of 2022, and up from a loss of nearly $7 million in Q2.

Transactions: 17,426, down from 21,752 in the third quarter of 2022.

Traffic: 51.3 million monthly average visitors in Q3, down slightly from the previous quarter but up year-over-year.

What Redfin had to say

Kelman colorfully acknowledged the grim reality of today’s housing market.

“But now, like Satan in Paradise Lost, surveying the dismal expanse of rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, and dens of his new home in hell, I feel a twinge of optimism,” he said. “If homes were only a speculative asset, our sales prospects would indeed be grim, but most people buy a home to move to a better life. Those plans can be deferred from 2022 to 2023, but not forever.”

Kelman said Redfin is seeing a meaningful rise in customers seeking listing consultations, and he also sees signs of softening prices. “Owners always mark listings down that didn’t sell in the summer, but there are more price drops this fall since at least 2015,” he said.

Notable moves

Redfin hopes to gain market share in the lucrative San Francisco and Los Angeles markets by piloting a new compensation model, Redfin Max. Agents in the program will remain W-2 employees with benefits, but their compensation will be completely commission-based.

Kelman said if Redfin Max works out in the two pilot markets, it could roll out to other high-price markets in weeks. Some version of the program could go out nationwide in a year if it’s profitable for Redfin and agents alike. 

Longtime Redfin executive Adam Wiener left the company in September. Wiener joined the company in 2007 as a product manager for agent tools, working his way up to president of real estate services. On Sept. 10, Jason Aleem, senior vice president of real estate sales, assumed sole responsibility for Redfin’s brokerage.

• The slow housing market continues to impact the company’s brokerage business, which was down 18% to $166 million in revenue. Average monthly visitors was up just 1% to 51.3 million, and Redfin’s market share dropped slightly year-over-year.
• Redfin’s rentals business continues to be a bright spot, with $47 million in revenue, up 23% year-over-year.
• Redfin stock was up slightly in after-hours trading. Shares are down by nearly 25% over the past month.
• “In October, we raised capital, began generating revenues from a new digital business, and launched all-variable agent pay in California,” said Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman. “This downturn has only made us stronger.”

The demand for office space in Seattle is the lowest among all cities measured in a new report from VTS, a commercial real estate technology platform.

The VTS Office Demand Index (VODI) report released this week shows Seattle experienced the greatest quarterly decline in demand for office space, with a 43% drop quarter-over-quarter and 52% drop year-over-year.

According to VTS, VODI tracks unique new tenant tour requirements of office properties in core U.S. markets. It’s intended to serve as an early indicator of upcoming office leasing activity and track new tenant demand.

The report measured demand in Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Washington, D.C., New York City and Chicago. National demand for office space at the end of the third quarter was just half of the pre-pandemic levels. 

The reports says that Seattle’s decline was led by a historically abnormal three-month absence of demand from tenants seeking the largest office spaces of 50,000 or more square feet. Tenants seeking mid-sized office spaces of 10,000-50,000 square feet were up during the period, “preventing an all-out crash in demand,” the report said.

“Seattle’s very low demand for office space is more reminiscent of the beginning of the pandemic than any other time, and it doesn’t appear to be changing soon,” Ryan Masiello, chief strategy officer of VTS, said in a news release. “The last and only other time we saw an absence of tenants seeking large spaces was during the beginning of the pandemic lockdown.”

Masiello added that the Seattle area’s dense population of tech jobs, which are amenable to working from home, has made it difficult to rebound. Another report, from JLL, said the commercial real estate market in the Seattle region continues to see record high vacancies.

“It will likely take some of the big area employers pushing harder for return-to-office, such as Microsoft and Amazon, to reverse this trend,” Masiello said.

Elsewhere in the country, the report points to signs of stability around office demand, despite persistent headwinds such as a cooling job market and ongoing remote work.

Los Angeles experienced the greatest growth despite months-long writer and actor strikes in Hollywood. The city’s demand for spaces greater than 50,000 square feet is now higher than at any time since June 2021.

[This story originally appeared on Real Estate News.]

Zillow shared some good news with investors Wednesday, reporting $496 million in revenue for the third quarter, representing a 3% increase from the same period last year. 

There was a notable 34% uptick in rental revenue and an 88% gain in purchase mortgage originations, Zillow co-founder and CEO Rich Barton highlighted in the letter to shareholders. However, Barton’s prepared remarks during Wednesday’s earnings call with investors were largely dominated by the recent verdict in the landmark Sitzer/Burnett case.

“It’s important that I address the high level of media attention and speculation surrounding several ongoing industry lawsuits, and what the implications may be for the broader residential real estate industry and for Zillow in particular,” Barton said. “The short version is we strongly believe Zillow is well positioned to thrive regardless of how it all plays out.”

Barton added that he believes appeals will likely keep the case “tied up in court for years” and reminded investors that “Zillow is not a party to this lawsuit nor other similar ones.”

Key numbers

Revenue: $496 million in Q3, which was down from $506 million the previous quarter but up 3% compared to the same period last year. 

Cash and cash equivalents: $3.3 billion at the end of Q3, which remained unchanged from the previous quarter. 

Adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization): $107 million, which was down slightly from $111 million the previous quarter and off from $130 million a year ago.

Net income/loss: Zillow reported a net loss of $28 million for Q3, which was slightly lower than the $35 million net loss from Q2 and significantly better than the $53 million net loss from Q2 2022. 

Traffic and visits: According to Zillow, the company saw 224 million average monthly unique visitors across its various apps and websites in Q3 while total visits during the quarter were 2.6 billion. Both metrics were down 5% year-over-year.

What Zillow had to say

Not only was Barton’s monologue largely focused on the outcome of the commissions trial, but many of the investors on the call had questions about Zillow’s position in a world where there is no guaranteed compensation for buyer agents. 

Barton reaffirmed his support for buyer agents and the theme of buyers having their own representation.

“We believe a well-lit game is cleaner and more equitable. People deserve and need independent representation,” Barton said. “We’ve seen double-siding in the industry, which is clearly a conflict and is at certain times more expensive to the transaction.”

In the letter to shareholders, Barton elaborated further on the theme if buyer agency were to be diminished.

“In this scenario, the U.S. market would likely transition to what we observe in several international geographies, where a few large portals offer a ‘pay to play’ digital listings marketplace,” Barton wrote. “In this scenario, we believe Zillow would be an odds-on favorite to become the leading digital listings marketplace, given our brand, traffic, engagement, and unique focus on solving movers’ real pain points with our software-anchored housing super app vision.”

Notable moves

While there was much discussion about the Sitzer/Burnett trial, Zillow recently won an unrelated case brought by the low-commission brokerage REX related to how the portal displays non-MLS listings. Following the Sitzer/Burnett verdict, however, REX announced it was requesting a new trial, but no ruling on the request has been made.

Additionally, Zillow execs highlighted the company’s recent announcement that it was acquiring popular CRM product Follow Up Boss and how it plays into Zillow’s “housing super app” concept. 

“Today, we are focused on delivering the ‘housing super app,’ a tech-enabled end-to-end platform with products and services that make it easier for people to move,” Barton said. “You’ve heard me say many times that 2023 is crucial for Zillow. It’s a year of execution as we prepare to scale in 2024 and 2025.”

[This story originally appeared on Real Estate News.]

Zillow Group is adding to its arsenal of agent tools with the acquisition of Follow Up Boss, a popular customer relationship management system for agents and brokers. Zillow is paying $400 million in cash up front, plus an additional $100 million cash earnout. 

Follow Up Boss’s 100 employees — including Co-founders Dan Corkill and Tom Markov — will be formally joining Zillow at the completion of the acquisition. The company will continue to operate as an independent brand, similar to ShowingTime, which Zillow acquired in 2021. 

The acquisition is the latest example of Zillow’s investment in its “housing super app” concept, Zillow Group Chief Industry Development Officer Errol Samuelson told Real Estate News.

“Follow Up Boss is another component which can help streamline the communications between the agent or the team and their clients,” Samuelson said. “We already have some integrations between Zillow and Follow Up Boss, so not only are those integrations going to stay in place, but they have 100 other integration partners, and those are going to stay in place.”

But should agents be worried about another beloved agent tool being scooped up by the real estate giant? Samuelson said it’s natural for “very committed customers” to wonder what might happen to products they use — and consider core to their business — when they are bought out.

“What I would say to people who have questions is that everything you loved about Follow Up Boss is only going to get better,” Samuelson said. “And the policy remains the same if you are the person who enters the data into the system — it’s your data and it belongs to you, and that’s not going to change.”

While Follow Up Boss has grown organically in the 13 years since it launched, Zillow will be able to provide a much greater level of investment and infusion of tech into the team and product, Samuelson added.

The news of the acquisition comes on the heels of the verdict against NAR and other major real estate players in the landmark Sitzer/Burnett class action lawsuit on Oct. 31. Zillow’s stock price fell over 7% immediately following the announcement of the verdict and continued to remain around $35.50 per share in after-hours trading. Last month, Zillow was victorious in a separate lawsuit over how it handles non-MLS listings.

This story originally appeared on Real Estate News.

Redfin is cutting ties with the industry’s top trade organization.

Early Monday morning, Redfin published an announcement signed by CEO Glenn Kelman and other top executives indicating that the Seattle-based brokerage would be leaving the National Association of Realtors. 

In the note, Kelman cited two primary reasons for the decision: an NAR policy that mandates a fee for the buyer’s agent on every listing and allegations of sexual harassment at the highest levels of the organization. 

Despite the ongoing commission lawsuits and growing outcry against NAR, Redfin leadership said this wasn’t an impulse decision. 

“We’ve had many meetings with NAR execs to explore compromises on the policies that would let us continue our support,” Redfin leaders wrote, adding that the company has paid over $13 million in NAR dues since 2017. 

Mantill Williams, VP of public relations and communications at NAR, told Real Estate News through a prepared comment that the organization respects Redfin’s decision but stands by its policies. “Redfin told us in June they were planning to separate from NAR, and we respect their choice to do so,” Williams said.

“The U.S. model of local MLS broker marketplaces has long been — and still is — considered the best value in the world. NAR stands by its pro-consumer, pro-competitive guidance for affiliated local broker marketplaces that ensure equity, efficiency, transparency and market-driven pricing options for home buyers and sellers,” Williams added.

Redfin, which reported having over 2,400 full-time lead agents at the end of 2022, will go further than simply discourage NAR membership — Redfin will require many of its agents to “leave NAR everywhere we can,” the note read. Kelman and team also added that the company had left the NAR board back in June, well before the explosive New York Times investigation into the organization’s ongoing allegations of misconduct.

Kelman, known for his candor and straightforward language, goes even further, saying that “NAR isn’t the future.”

“Our disagreement is with NAR, not with our industry,” the note says. “We love our industry. We’ve tried to love NAR. But enough is enough.”

A jury determined that Zillow did not make deceptive changes to the way it displays non-MLS listings, a significant victory for the company.

The Real Estate Exchange (REX) sued Zillow and the National Association of Realtors over what it says were deceptive practices to conceal non-MLS listings on Zillow’s heavily trafficked website. REX was a low-commission brokerage that ceased operations in May 2022.

In a trial in U.S. District Court in Seattle, a jury decided Sept. 29 that REX did not prove Zillow used false advertising in its decision to put non-MLS listings on a different section of the website. The jury also said Zillow proved its defense on a second claim about unfair or deceptive acts.

“We’re pleased with today’s victory and are ready to move on and focus on what matters: helping customers who come to Zillow get into their next home,” said Will Lemke, corporate communications manager for the company, in an email.

NAR was dropped from the case after U.S. District Judge Thomas Zilly ruled in August that REX Homes’ antitrust claim was without merit, effectively removing NAR as a party to the case. The case continued as Judge Zilly allowed REX’s claims that included unfair/deceptive trade practices.

The case was filed in March 2021, and in the original complaint, REX claims its business was damaged when non-MLS listings on Zillow were relegated to a secondary search results tab, limiting traffic to those listings.

Zillow had modified its site in January 2021 after it began using the Internet Data Exchange (IDX) feed that handles MLS listings. Zillow said it made the change in order to comply with NAR guidelines, specifically its co-mingling policy.

REX launched in 2015, with the goal of transforming the real estate industry to “push past the outmoded practices of traditional real estate brokers to provide a superior outcome for both buyers and sellers at one-third the cost,” its website claimed.

At the time the lawsuit was filed, REX was a licensed broker active in 19 states. Instead of marketing homes through the MLS, the company used digital technology to market directly to consumers, “using data modeling and machine learning to ‘match sellers and buyers of homes as accurately and speedily as possible on Zillow, Google, Facebook, and other channels,'” according to the court filing. 

REX claimed its model reduced the total commission paid to 3.3% on average, well below the national brokerage rate of around 5.5%. It also estimated that in a five-year period, the company saved consumers more than $29 million in commissions.

Seattle-based real estate startup Flyhomes this week announced it plans to acquire certain assets from Home Sale Assured, a Chicago-area company that helps homeowners move into a new home without needing to sell their current home.

• Founded last year by real estate lending veteran Eric Meadow, Home Sale Assured aims to make it easier for lenders to approve new home loans before the close of a sale on a previous home. Flyhomes offers a similar product called Buy Before You Sell.
• Home Sale Assured is a brand operating within Innovative Holdings, LLC. Flyhomes will acquire the brand, and Meadow is joining Flyhomes as vice president of partnerships.
• Flyhomes, known for its service that helps home-buyers secure purchases with all-cash offers, went through its third round of layoffs earlier this summer amid a slow real estate market. Flyhomes acquired host-to-own platform Loftium in February.

Zillow Group revenue rose slightly to $506 million in the second quarter, well ahead of its prior guidance of $451 million to $479 million for the three months ended June 30, the company reported Wednesday afternoon.

But despite exceeding Wall Street’s expectations and outperforming the overall market, the Seattle-based real estate services and media company continued to feel the effects of higher mortgage rates and a challenging housing market.

• Residential revenue, including Premier Agent advertising services for real estate agents, declined by 3% from a year ago to $380 million for the quarter.
• Mortgages revenue fell 17% to $24 million, which the company attributed to higher mortgage rates impacting demand and its mortgage marketplace.
• Traffic to Zillow Group’s websites and apps slipped 3% to 226 million average monthly unique visitors, with 2.7 billion visits, down 8% from a year ago.

One bright spot: rental revenues rose 28% to $91 million for the quarter, which the company attributed to strong traffic and growth in multifamily properties.

Looking ahead, Zillow Group said in its second-quarter letter to shareholders that its current revenue outlook for the third quarter is $458 million to $486 million. That’s below the average analyst estimate of $488.1 million for the upcoming quarter. Shares fell 2% in after-hours trading, after the earnings report.

Lead by serial entrepreneur Rich Barton as CEO, Zillow Group has been remaking itself since exiting the “iBuyer” home-flipping business in 2021 to focus on core businesses including real estate listings, home loans, and real estate agent advertising. Its brands include Zillow.com, Trulia, StreetEasy and HotPads.

“I’m pleased with our steady progress on improving and integrating our customer and partner experiences, especially in touring, financing, and renting,” Barton said in a statement. “The housing super app is coming into focus, opening up significant transaction TAM [Total Addressable Market] for the company and our shareholders.”

On the bottom line for the second quarter, Zillow Group posted a net loss of $35 million, vs. a profit of $8 million in the same quarter a year ago, as calculated using Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).

However, on a non-GAAP basis, adjusted for share-based compensation and other factors, earnings per share were 42 cents, significantly ahead of Wall Street expectations of 18 cents per share, as reported by Yahoo Finance.

Overall revenue of $506 million compared with expectations of $471.6 million.

Seattle-based real estate technology company Zillow is leveraging artificial intelligence to create more immersive listings designed to stand out from the pack and help a home sell faster.

The company’s new “Listing Showcase” experience comes from ShowingTime+, a brand under the Zillow Group banner, and relies heavily on photography features and interactive floor plans to bolster online home listing viewing.

Some of the highlights include:

• Immersive interactive floor plan to allows buyers to fully understand a home layout.
• Seamless toggle between photos, the interactive floor plan and a virtual tour. 
• Highlighted floor plan overlay to connect the photos to their location in the home.
• Media grouped by room for easy navigation.
• Self-rotating high-res photo carousel.

To build the Showcase listings, AI is used to select so-called “hero images.” Trulia, another Zillow brand, explained what hero images are and why they matter in this previous blog post. The images in Showcase listings are based on buyer preferences, and they are connected to corresponding rooms in the interactive floor plan or room-by-room displays.

Zillow said in a Tuesday news release that the experience will improve as new functionality and AI-enabled features become available in the coming months. For example, listing agents will soon be able to select from AI-generated insights on which home facts and features matter most to home shoppers, to highlight those features in a listing.

“As soon as shoppers land on a Showcase listing, they’ll be virtually transported into the home, giving them a deep understanding of the home’s flow, architecture and design — all before visiting in person,” said Mike Lane, vice president of ShowingTime+, in a statement.

The first iteration of Listing Showcase is available in Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Diego and Seattle. The offering will be sold by subscription and be available to a select number of listing agents in each market.

In its latest quarterly earnings report in May, Zillow beat estimates for Q1 revenue as it continues to deal with a slumping housing market. Since abandoning its big bet on iBuying, Zillow has shifted its focus to building a “housing super app” that addresses various aspect of real estate including buying, selling, and renting.

“Our goal is to increase engagement, customer transactions, and revenue per customer transaction by investing across five growth pillars: touring, financing, seller solutions, enhancing our partner network, and integrating our services,” CEO Rich Barton wrote in a shareholders letter at the time.