Weekly Radar #297: Futurizing With Geek Estate 4.0, HSA Agrees To A Cool Quarter B, The Struggle Is Real, Completing A Courtship Of The 3D World
What's covered in this week's GEM Crystal Weekly Radar:
- Our team has launched Geek Estate 4.0. - our brand-new marketing site!
- Drew covers the recent HomeServices of America settlement, and comes to the conclusion that the lawyers have won.
- The Foundation for Innovation in Real Estate is sponsoring 3 hours of mental health support time for tech founders in need.
- Matterport has been acquired by CoStar at a valuation of $2.1 billion.
- The GEM Proptech Index had a combined market cap of $245.929B, a 5.52% increase from the previous week.
Geek Estate Blog Recap:
Geek Estate Team
Geek Estate Team
Geek Estate Team
Geek Estate Team
Geek Estate Team
Transmission Recap:
Drew covers how new technological shifts with AI and innovations will impact real estate in the coming decade. Before that, Dennis Steigerwalt dove into a few technologies that help real estate developers maximize water efficiency and minimize waste.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
FUTURIZING WITH GEEK ESTATE 4.0
By: Drew Meyers
2,144 days after Geek Estate's 3.0 facelift, Geek Estate 4.0 is here. The modern design and future-looking visuals on GeekEstate.com aim to better showcase the full GEM experience.
Special thanks to ❇️Darian Woolley❇️ for project managing the initiative, Jeff Ognita for design work, plus to ❇️Dustin DeVries❇️ and his team at Caffeine Interactive to coding/deploying the final designs.
A few goals impacting the redesign strategy:
- Highlight the GEM Crystal newsletter, which was nowhere to be seen on the prior home page focused exclusively on GEM (Diamond).
- Make Geek Estate the parent brand, and GEM Diamond a sub landing page rather than the top level home page.
- Modernize the overall design and branding, using new Diamond and Crystal logos.
- Update visuals with a lens to associate Geek Estate's brand with the future of real estate and the broader Built World.
- Provide clear feature differentiation between Crystal and Diamond.
- More testimonials. Thank you ❇️Clelia Peters, Nate Smoyer, Ted Adler, York Baur, Mike Chang, Bryan Copley, Anthony Romano, and Dave Garland❇️. If you'd like to provide one, please send it to ❇️Ben Godfrey❇️ (ben at geekestate dot com).
Have a look at the Geek Estate home page...
...and, the revamped GEM Diamond landing page...
Would love to hear whether the website gives an accurate first impression for what you know that we provide in the way of overall value, analysis, and networking to the membership base. Any feedback or suggested improvements would be welcome.
My personal ask: GEM is primarily driven by referrals, you can enable us to invest more in the membership experience by helping us grow. Please send the website on to a fellow founder or executive who you believe will value the community.
REAL ESTATE
HSA AGREES TO A COOL QUARTER B
By: Drew Meyers
The remaining named defendant from the ❇️Sitzer/Burnett case❇️, HomeServices of America, has agreed to a settlement which will require they "pay $250 million and enact changes to its business practices as part of an agreement to settle lawsuits that posed an ongoing threat to the firm," according to Inman. The deal will protect "nearly 70,000 agents, 51 brands, and over 300 franchises..."
I have to call this quote by Robert A. Braun, a partner at the law firm Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll (represented plaintiffs in the Moehrl case):
These settlements will return hundreds of millions of dollars to home sellers and empower both sellers and buyers in the real estate negotiation process. This is one of the most important transactions in a person’s lifetime. Confidence in the process is critical.
Give me a f'ing break...if sellers are actually receiving millions of dollars, I will be shocked beyond belief. Sorry, a few million bucks spread out over tens of thousands of sellers doesn't pass the test. The lawyers win this, plain and simple. Someone prove me wrong, and I'll rescind my statement.
❇️Compass was the latest settlement we covered❇️, but Real Brokerage has since agreed to a $9.25 million settle. Bottom line...the brokerages on the $2B in sales volume list have their hands full navigating settlements. If you're a startup with ambitions of selling products or services to that crowd, you'd be wise to invest your time and energy elsewhere until the storm passes.
STARTUPS
THE STRUGGLE IS REAL
By: Drew Meyers
From financial strain to self-doubt to isolation to perfectionism, there are a range of struggles every founder faces. If you tell me you have all your sh*t figured out, you're lying.
One of the best remedies is to vocalize your feelings. There is some level of therapy that takes place in GEM Diamond at dinners/retreats...given its composition of folks on similar founder journeys going through many of the same things. Talking to professional is also recommended. On that side, the Foundation for Innovation in Real Estate is helping in a cool way: sponsoring mental health hours with specialists. FIRE will cover three hours (aka the Minimum Effective Dose) with one of their partner mental health coaches who understands the tech founder persona. The whole thing is 99% anonymous. Learn more and sign up here.
Questions? Reach out to ❇️Matt Knight❇️.
COMPLETING A COURTSHIP OF THE 3D WORLD
By: Drew Meyers
Matterport has been acquired by CoStar Group, according to Inman. The deal valued Matterport at $2.1 billion (enterprise value of $1.6B). "Stockholders will receive $2.75 in cash and $2.75 in shares of CoStar Group stock."
Bringing in troves of unique data and imagery about homes and buildings is obviously a big win for CoStar in its chess match with Zillow. That said, I don't think this deal will surprise anyone; chalk this up as ❇️a prediction win❇️ for ❇️Matt Michalski❇️. The $2.1 billion valuation is a 4x premium over ❇️Matterport's market cap of $541M end of day Friday❇️.
BIZ INTEL
Proptech Index Update
Consisting of 30 stocks, the GEM Proptech Index had a combined market cap of $245.929B, a 5.52% increase from the previous week.
GEM DIAMOND MEMBER NEWS
- Local Logic announced a new partnership with homegenius. - Vincent-Charles Hodder
- Hitch announced its Home Equity White Label program with its first partner, United Mortgage Corp. – William Schoeffler
- Get a sneak peak at Nuhom, a new conversational home search platform. – Rishi Palriwala
- RealSage is part of Moderne Ventures' 2024 Spring Passport Class. – Arunabh Dastidar
- Homebuyer.com launched a new product, Immediate Mortgage Approval. – Dan Green
- Andrew Sims has a new role as the Chief Revenue Officer at SentriLock.
- EasyKnock partnered with Piñata. – Lily Liu
- Listen to Tim Quirk on the Category Visionaries podcast.
- HouseVenture acquired dot.LA. – Mike Chang and Spencer Rascoff
- eXp Realty welcomed Wendy Forsythe as new Chief Marketing Officer. – Seth Siegler
- VeriFast started using Propexo to build property management software integrations. – Tim Ray and Remen Okoruwa