What's covered in this week's GEM Crystal Weekly Radar:

• Realtor.com and Zillow have agreed to a partnership - an unlikely agreement between two arch rivals.
• We cover Microsoft's return to online real estate with Bing Homes.
• Which PropTech categories are investors most interested in? Logan peeks at the Year-End 2023 Global PropTech Confidence Index.

Geek Estate Blog Recap:

2024 REACH Commercial Applications Now Open

REACH operates a variety of accelerator programs around the globe, created and operated by Second Century Ventures and backed by NAR. The program offers education, mentorship and exposure for technology companies working to scale their businesses across the U.S. residential and commercial real estate markets…

GeekEstate BlogGeek Estate Team

Proptech Job Opportunity: Head of Business Development & Strategic Partnerships at EasyKnock

We have a job opportunity to share from a member of GEM Diamond, EasyKnock, an institutionalized sale-leaseback residential platform. Company Description EasyKnock is a equity solutions platform giving homeowners flexible, quick solutions for their financial needs. Whether paying off debt, purchasing a new home, or…

GeekEstate BlogGeek Estate Team

A Comprehensive Outlook on Real Estate Challenges and Trends in 2024 with Michael Lucarelli

The real estate market is in a state of flux. Lawsuits, record property prices, high mortgage rates, an affordability crisis. RentSpree CEO and Co-Founder Michael Lucarelli is providing his take on the state of the market and what the rest of this year might hold.…

GeekEstate BlogGeek Estate Team

Meet the 2024 Ivory Prize Top 25

An applied academic institution at the University of Utah’s David Eccles School of Business, Ivory Innovations is dedicated to supporting innovative solutions in housing affordability. They recently announced the Top 25 Finalists for the 2024 Ivory Prize for Housing Affordability. These finalists will join the…

GeekEstate BlogGeek Estate Team

The Rise of Climate Tech and NYC’s Developing Climate Hubs

[Adapted from The Rise of Climate Tech and NYC’s Developing Climate Hubs from Proptech Consulting LLC] New York City is the nation’s epicenter for the financial, real estate, and media industries. In recent years, climate technology has also become a growing new sector for which…

GeekEstate BlogJonathan Klein

Transmission Recap:

In our last Transmission, Drew delved into the long and short of Zillbnb - what Zillow's announcement means for the future of short and long-term rentals. Before that, Drew discussed the Rabbit's 'r1', a compact AI device, as a glimpse into the future of blended hardware and AI...or perhaps just another fad the smart phone makes irrelevant.

REAL ESTATE

AN UNLIKELY COOPERATION
By: Drew Meyers 

Portal arch rivals Realtor.com and Zillow agreed to a partnership: Zillow will "begin syndicating apartment listings to Realtor.com" as the "exclusive provider of multifamily rental listings" (25 units or more), according to Real Estate News. Zillow gets more eyeballs on its 39,000+ units of multifamily rentals, and Realtor.com receives additional inventory to display to its renters as well as financial upside (I presume, for units that end up sourcing tenants via the partnership).

You can bet, fending off a common foe -- Andy Florance and CoStar -- makes this deal make sense on one level. However, it does remind me a bit of the Zillow-YahooRE agreement from a decade ago, in which Yahoo agreed to allow Zillow to be the exclusive provider of all of its listings. I'd argue that deal was the beginning of the end for YahooRE (this is what YahooRE has become). Of course, the Realtor.com-Zillow deal doesn't involve the core of Realtor.com's single family, MLS-sourced inventory. But still. I'm not so sure it's a good sign that Realtor.com is (seemingly) be giving up on directly sourcing apartment listings.