If you spend enough time watching markets, you eventually stop focusing on day-to-day price moves and start paying attention to longer patterns and what tends to move first. For me, silver has long been one of those assets — not because it’s a prediction machine but because it often reacts early when deeper pressures begin building in the system.
Right now, several of those pressures appear to be converging.
Key Takeaways:
Silver has surged ~150% as supply deficits enter fifth consecutive year
Bank of America outlines scenarios where silver could reach $135-$309/oz
Extreme paper-to-physical ratios amplify price volatility, especially when markets demand physical delivery
Real estate and precious metals respond to similar monetary forces
Why Silver Is Worth Watching
Silver occupies a unique position in global markets. It isn’t purely a monetary metal like gold, and it isn’t purely an industrial input like copper. It sits somewhere in between.
That dual role makes silver especially sensitive to:
Changes in monetary policy
Industrial demand cycles
Physical supply constraints
Shifts in investor confidence
When silver moves sharply, it’s often responding to multiple forces at once. That’s what makes it useful as a signal — particularly during periods when the broader macro environment is unsettled.
Recent Price Action as a Signal, Not the Story
Silver’s recent price surge has been substantial, moving from roughly the $30 range in early 2025 to highs in the $80s – representing gains of ~150% before pulling back modestly later in the year. Moves of that magnitude are unusual and rarely occur without broader macro stress in the background (see recent silver price data on Trading Economics: https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/silver).
This doesn’t mean silver prices themselves are the story. More often, sharp repricing reflects rising concern around:
Liquidity conditions
Currency stability
Debt sustainability
Demand for assets outside purely financial systems
Silver tends to respond quickly because it sits at the intersection of all four.
The Structure of the Silver Market
Another reason silver behaves the way it does has to do with how it’s priced.
Most silver price discovery occurs in futures and derivatives markets, where “paper” claims on silver trade in volumes far exceeding the amount of physical metal that changes hands (some estimates suggesting ratios exceeding 100:1 or even 300:1). This structure is standard in modern commodities markets, and I believe it may be a lever to moderate pricing. The paper instruments can expand and contract on a dime, and flow in to meet sudden ebbs and flows that happen.
In some ways, the paper silver market functions like financial leverage; it enables liquidity and efficient price discovery, but when fundamentals shift sharply, the same structure that provided stability can amplify moves in both directions. Price moves become sharper, and markets adjust faster than many participants expect, that’s where the leverage analogy becomes most visible.
That dynamic often makes silver one of the first places stress shows up.
Debt, Monetary Policy, and the Search for Stability
Zooming out, it’s difficult to ignore the broader backdrop.
Sovereign debt levels — particularly in developed economies — are historically high. Monetary policy has oscillated between tightening and easing in relatively short order, and confidence in long-term currency stability has become less absolute than it once was.
In response, some countries have explored ways to reduce reliance on the U.S. dollar for trade and reserves. This trend toward diversification doesn’t mean the dollar is disappearing, but it does suggest a world where capital is more actively searching for alternatives when uncertainty rises. Compared to literally any other countries’ offerings, U.S treasuries are STILL the best available in that category.
Hard assets — especially those with limited supply — tend to benefit in that environment.
Supply Constraints Are Not Theoretical
Unlike financial assets, silver supply cannot be expanded quickly.
Global mine production has hovered around relatively stable levels while demand has continued to grow. Industry reporting indicates that silver markets have experienced persistent supply deficits of 100+ million ounces for multiple consecutive years, driven by both industrial use and investment demand (see analysis at CarbonCredits.com: https://carboncredits.com/silver-price-hits-64-as-supply-deficit-enters-fifth-year-prices-may-reach-100-oz/).
For a long time, industrial consumption absorbed much of that imbalance quietly. What’s different now is that investment demand has increasingly layered on top of already tight fundamentals — an environment that tends to produce volatility rather than gradual price adjustment.
What Institutional Analysts Are Saying
While extreme price targets should always be treated cautiously, it’s notable that some mainstream analysts have begun outlining scenarios where silver could reprice substantially under certain macro conditions.
This isn’t a forecast — it’s a conditional scenario. But its existence matters because it shows that discussions about higher silver prices are no longer confined to fringe commentary.
Resources, Processing Capacity, and Geopolitics
Geopolitical decisions are rarely driven by a single variable. Energy security, trade routes, domestic politics, and strategic competition all play roles.
That said, access to resource processing infrastructure still matters.
Venezuela is widely known for its oil reserves, but it is also rich in mineral resources. According to reporting by the International Business Times, JPMorgan Chase underwrote approximately £6 billion in financing for a U.S.-based metals smelter plant within hours of U.S. legal actions targeting Venezuelan metal assets, highlighting how control over processing infrastructure can move quickly alongside geopolitical developments (International Business Times: https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/jpmorgan-funds-6-billion-smelter-plant-hours-after-us-seizes-venezuela-metal-wealth-1768359).
This doesn’t prove that precious metals were the primary motivation behind any specific action. But it does illustrate how metals, refining capacity, and strategic resources remain part of the broader calculus — especially during periods of global uncertainty.
A Historical Lens
The closest modern parallel may be the inflationary period of the 1970s and early 1980s.
That era was defined by rising debt, delayed policy responses, and a long process of restoring confidence through tough monetary decisions. Even then, stabilization took years — not months.
Today’s circumstances are different in many ways, but the lesson remains: monetary shifts unfold over long timelines, and early signals often appear in places most people aren’t watching closely.
What This Could Mean for Real Estate
Real estate doesn’t exist in isolation from these forces.
Loose monetary policy tends to increase liquidity and aggregate demand over time. Unlike the pandemic period, builders have had time to catch up on supply, reducing the likelihood of another extreme shortage-driven price spike.
Still, periods of economic uncertainty often reinforce interest in tangible assets. That can show up as sustained demand and increased transaction volume — even if price appreciation is more measured than in prior cycles.
In that sense, real estate shares more in common with precious metals than many assume. Both respond to the same monetary forces, both have supply constraints, and both attract capital during periods of currency uncertainty. The main difference is liquidity and transaction costs, but the underlying dynamics are remarkably similar.
Final Thought
None of this is a prediction carved in stone. Markets are adaptive, and policy decisions can change trajectories quickly.
But when multiple indicators — silver price action, supply constraints, debt expansion, institutional commentary, and strategic resource developments — begin pointing in the same general direction, it’s worth paying attention.
Silver isn’t the destination. It’s one of the earliest signals.
And in complex systems, early signals tend to matter.
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Declining mortgage rates and a surge in for-sale listings had homebuyers scrambling to apply for mortgages last week at the fastest pace in more than two years, according to a weekly survey of lenders by the Mortgage Bankers Association.
But mortgage rates are on the rebound again as investors who fund most home loans weigh how a strong June jobs report and the Trump administration’s threats to impose new tariffs in August might affect Federal Reserve policymakers’ willingness to cut rates.
Applications for purchase loans were up by a seasonally adjusted 9 percent last week when compared to the week before, and 25 percent from a year ago, the MBA’s Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey showed.
“Mortgage rates moved lower last week, with the 30-year fixed rate decreasing to 6.77 percent, its lowest level in three months,” MBA Deputy Chief Economist Joel Kan said, in a statement.
After adjusting for the July 4th holiday, demand for purchase loans came in at the strongest pace since February 2023.
“Homebuyer demand is being fueled by increasing housing inventory and moderating home-price growth,” Kan said. “The average loan size on a purchase application, at $432,600, was at its lowest since January 2025.”
Active listing inventory was up 28.1 percent in June to a post-pandemic high, according to Realtor.com, and home prices have come down by at least a full percentage point in nearly one-third of the 100 largest U.S. housing markets tracked by ICE Mortgage Technology.
After spiking in April following President Trump’s “liberation day” tariff announcement, mortgage rates were trending down during June on hopes that trade negotiations would forestall implementation of additional “reciprocal tariffs.”
Mortgage rates on the rebound
Rates for 30-year fixed-rate mortgage came down from 6.92 percent on May 21 to 6.64 percent on July 1 — a drop of nearly 30 basis points, according to rate lock data tracked by Optimal Blue.
Although the Trump administration pushed back plans to impose reciprocal tariffs on July 9, mortgage rates are on the rise again as the White House sends warning letters to countries that will face higher tariffs on Aug. 1 if they don’t make trade deals.
Nearly two dozen countries including Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand and Cambodia have received letters from the Trump administration so far, the Associated Press reported.
At 6.74 percent Tuesday, rates on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages are up 10 basis points from July 1. A basis point is one hundredth of a percentage point.
Tariffs are a concern to investors who buy mortgage-backed securities that fund most home loans because of their potential to be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices, rekindling inflation.
The Trump administration has been pressuring the Federal Reserve to lower short-term interest rates, and demanded that Fed Chair Jerome Powell resign.
But after cutting short-term interest rates by a full percentage point at the end of last year only to see mortgage rates go up, Fed policymakers have said they’re waiting to see how the Trump administration’s tariff policies shake out, and what impact they have on the economy.
At 15.8 percent, the effective rate of all tariffs already in place is the highest since 1936, and will push prices up by 1.5 percent, according to a June 17 analysis by The Budget Lab at Yale.
Job growth and unemployment
The Fed is wrestling with its dual mandate to maximize employment while keeping inflation in check.
According to the latest numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. economy added 147,000 jobs in June — 37,000 more jobs than forecasters had expected.
Job growth cooling
The July 3 report pushed mortgage rates and yields on government bonds up, as it gave Fed policymakers more leeway to wait until September to lower short-term interest rates.
There are even doubts about a September rate cut. The CME FedWatch Tool, which tracks futures markets to predict the probability of future Fed moves, on Wednesday put the odds of a September rate cut at 71 percent, down from 94 percent on July 2.
But in the long term, job growth is cooling, and forecasters at Pantheon Macroeconomics are calling the recent rise in rates “nonsensical.”
Much of June’s job growth, they say, was due to an artificial construct of seasonal adjustments that calls into doubt estimates that state and local government jobs grew by 80,000 last month, including 64,000 education jobs.
With downward revisions of monthly job growth from initial estimates averaging 29,000 since January 2023, “underlying job growth probably was close to zero,” Pantheon forecasters said in their July 7 U.S. Economic Monitor.
Unemployment trending up
Pantheon forecasters expects the unemployment rate to rise from 4.1 percent in June to about 4.75 percent in Q4, which they think would motivate the Fed to cut short term rates by a total of 75 basis points at its final three meetings of the year.
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Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.
That’s the sound that startled Houston-based Realtor Ricky Gonzalez out of his sleep in the wee hours of July 4.
“We were in Kerrville for the Fourth of July and to celebrate my friend Mark’s birthday. I arrived around 8 p.m. or 9 p.m., and it was just kind of drizzling. It wasn’t flooding or anything like that,” he said. “I stayed up pretty late, up to at least, like, two o’clock. We went to bed, and then Nash, the dog, was barking. He was pawing at the door. We noticed it was around 5:43 a.m., and we were like, ‘Oh, go to sleep, Nash.’ Eventually, my friend Bert woke up and checked on Nash, and when he opened the window, he saw his partner’s truck floating away.”
The drizzle that lulled Gonzalez to sleep just hours earlier had transformed into a raging river surge, carrying four of his friends’ trucks several miles downstream. The remaining truck was lodged into the lower level of the Airbnb, with a few load-bearing beams keeping it from breaking through to the other side. Upstairs, Gonzalez and his 12 friends were frantically gathering coolers, pool noodles and floaties — anything that could help them float in case the river began to swallow the second floor.
Ricky Gonzalez
“We just went into survival mode. We all started assigning each other different tasks,” he told Inman. “I said, ‘Okay, let me find an attic.’ The reason I was looking for an attic is because, obviously, Houston, we’re familiar with flooding due to [Hurricane] Katrina and all of that. I was scared that the water was going to rise, and I wanted to make sure we could get onto the roof. I was prepared to bust through the attic, if we needed to.”
Fortunately, Gonzalez located two large windows in the attic that his housemates could use to climb onto the roof. He kept the attic door open, directing everyone to be ready to evacuate if the water reached the balcony. Amid the calls to emergency personnel and the Airbnb’s owners, who narrowly escaped their RV during the surge, Gonzalez paused to FaceTime his sister and offer what could’ve been his last goodbyes.
“Next door to our house, there was a one-story house, and I didn’t see it anymore. It was gone. I could hear people screaming from the river. I don’t know if any of them made it,” he said. “I particularly called my sister on FaceTime several times just to let her know, ‘Hey, this is where I am. You have my location, but in case I don’t see you…’ I was kind of giving my goodbye.”
For more than two hours, Gonzalez and his friends were trapped on the second floor — waiting to be rescued.
Their ordeal finally came to an end when Gonzalez popped his head out of a window, attempting to show his sister via FaceTime what’d happened to the cinderblock fence that surrounded the backyard. By then, the surge had subsided, allowing a nearby family, Leo and Paula Garcia, to spot Gonzalez and help them leave the Airbnb, which was at risk of collapsing.
“They saw me hanging out the window, and they waved at me. I waved back and went to the front of the house,” he said. “They said the house was pretty beat up and that we needed to get out. Thankfully, by then, the water was waist-deep. Even though the water was still rushing, they helped us make a line of 13 people with five dogs, which we carried out.”
The Garcias drove everyone to their home, which had been spared from the worst of the flooding, and cooked breakfast. Afterwards, the Garcias drove Gonzalez and his friends 65 miles to the San Antonio International Airport so they could rent cars and find lodging for the night.
“We spent the night in San Antonio and the next morning, in our rental cars, we drove back just to assess the damage,” he said. “I left my keys inside my car, so I just wanted to see if I could find them. And thankfully, we found one of the cars about, you know, two, three miles down river, and then I was able to get my keys. It was just crazy to see all of what was underwater. The house was about 100 yards away from the river, so it was crazy that the surge went that far out.”
Gonzalez has had little time to decompress since returning to Houston, as he spent Saturday night doing two interviews with CNN — the network had noticed an Instagram video Gonzalez posted about his experience. Since then, another 60 to 70 global news outlets have reached out to Gonzalez for interviews, but he’s turned them all down.
“I just don’t feel like getting on camera and doing all that again,” he said. “It really didn’t hit me till [Tuesday]. I was lying in bed and just going back and looking at the videos I recorded during the flood. I could hear the fear in my voice. I was trying to stay calm, but I could hear the fear. I wasn’t even speaking correctly, and I was cursing a lot, just because I was like, ‘What is going on?’”
“And then seeing the death count go up to above 100, man, like, I don’t know … This, very easily, could have ended very differently for us,” he added. “There was another story that I heard of a group of friends who were on a balcony, just like we were. There were fewer friends, but they got swept away. And I told my group of friends, ‘This could have been us.’”
Despite the immeasurable loss, which includes nearly 120 deaths and 173 people still missing, Gonzalez said he still sees a sliver of light.
“Despite all the craziness around this world and the hatred, [that family] was quick to take us in. It proves that people still live their lives full of love and share that with others. There are people still doing the right thing,” he said. “My mom would always say, ‘You never go wrong by doing it right.’ I’m just grateful for the people who saved us.”
Gonzalez said he’s contacted the Airbnb hosts and the family who helped him and his friends escape. Both parties are safe and sound, and he’s figuring out ways to repay their kindness and help the wider Kerrville community.
“Having just recently gone through losing my mom, and I know search and rescue is happening, but there are a lot of people who will need to pay for a funeral. That’s something no one ever really talks about or prepares you for. And I want to help. My friends want to help. So we’re figuring out a good way to help those families because funerals aren’t cheap, especially when you may have to bury multiple people.”
In the meantime, Gonzalez said he trusts that the real estate community, as they’ve done many times before, will step up and support affected families.
“The real estate industry is very close-knit,” he said. “I’ve had amazing Houston Association of Realtors and Texas Realtors leaders reach out, check in and see how they can help,” he said. “The Texas Realtor Relief Program is a great place to start, but it’s going to be a long road to recovery. You can donate, you can share resources and, sometimes, just being a listening ear can mean a lot.”
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Mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac weren’t informed in advance that they would be required to sign off on loans qualified using the new VantageScore 4.0 credit score algorithm, mortgage industry insider Christopher Whalen said Wednesday.
Because rating agencies and bank regulators aren’t prepared to work with the new score either, Whalen said he expects lenders will be slow to make the switch to VantageScore 4.0 — a credit scoring algorithm developed by the big three credit bureaus to challenge the FICO Classic score now used by most mortgage lenders.
Bill Pulte, the director of Fannie and Freddie’s federal regulator, announced new rules for evaluating borrowers who apply for conventional loans backed by the mortgage giants on the social media platform X Tuesday.
Changes to those rules were mandated by Congress in 2018, and the Federal Housing Finance Agency had been working with lenders for several years on implementing them.
But Pulte’s announcement appeared to depart from the carefully laid-out plan previously put forward by the FHFA.
The FHFA announced in 2022 that it had signed off on VantageScore 4.0 and a new FICO score, FICO 10 T, for future use by Fannie and Freddie. Under a timeline proposed in 2023, lenders were to move from the current Classic FICO credit score model and start using both VantageScore 4.0 and FICO Score 10 T by the end of this year.
But Fannie and Freddie abandoned that timeline on Jan. 16 — four days before President Trump’s inauguration — with no explanation.
In announcing on X that Fannie and Freddie would be required to start accepting loans evaluated using VantageScore 4.0 on Tuesday, Pulte caught mortgage lenders by surprise — and left them wondering exactly how the new rules will work.
The Mortgage Bankers Association issued a cautious statement welcoming the move, saying Pulte’s proposal “could help to accomplish the goals of added competition in the credit score space and reduced consumer costs, if implemented correctly.” But the trade group said there are “numerous implementation questions” that need to be addressed in order to realize such benefits.
Because the FHFA didn’t issue a formal rule or issue a press release Tuesday, mortgage lenders were left wondering:
Will lenders be allowed to submit loans reviewed using only VantageScore 4.0, or will Fannie and Freddie also require FICO Classic scores currently in use?
Are there still plans to allow Fannie and Freddie to accept loans scored by the new FICO Score 10 T?
Will loan level pricing adjustments (LLPAs — fees charged by Fannie and Freddie according to borrower risk) be different for borrowers scored by VantageScore 4.0?
Are private mortgage insurers (required by Fannie and Freddie when borrowers put less than 20 percent down) ready to back loans scored using only VantageScore 4.0?
Will investors in mortgage-backed securities (MBS) — the ultimate source of funding for most mortgages — treat loans scored using VantageScore 4.0 the same as loans scored with FICO Classic?
Rating agencies, banks and investors still use FICO Classic, Whalen said on X, and “there is no track record” of how mortgages evaluated using VantageScore 4.0 or FICO Score 10 T will perform.
(In December, Fair Isaac announced that Cardinal Financial had sold the first batch of government-issued mortgage-backed securities to include VA loans qualified using the FICO Score 10 T. More than 21 mortgage lenders use FICO Score 10 T for non-Fannie and Freddie loans, the company said at the time.)
Whalen, an industry veteran with connections at Fannie and Freddie, is chairman of Whalen Global Advisors LLC. His past experiences include senior research positions at Kroll Bond Rating Agency and Carrington Holding Co.
“This ill-considered decision by Pulte will force buyers of loans to come up with a ‘transition table’ for Vantage 4 to FICO 10, but such attempts will be imprecise,” Whalen posted on the social media platform X Wednesday.
Good morning. Yesterday @Pulte announced on X that the government-sponsored enterprises will immediately allow lenders to use VantageScore 4.0 to evaluate borrowers. Since neither the rating agencies nor the bank regulators are prepared to work with Vantage, we’ll be surprised to…
— Richard Christopher Whalen (@rcwhalen) July 9, 2025
The FHFA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did not respond to Inman’s requests for comment.
The National Association of Realtors welcomed Pulte’s announcement Wednesday, saying it will allow mortgage lenders to use VantageScore 4.0 “alongside or in place of traditional FICO scores” when assessing borrower creditworthiness.
Pulte — who, after being appointed by the Trump administration to lead the FHFA, purged Fannie and Freddie’s boards of directors and made himself the chair of both companies — claims allowing lenders to use VantageScore 4.0 will help more renters qualify for a mortgage.
Bill Pulte
“Today, we allowed for RENT payments to COUNT toward qualifying for a MORTGAGE,” Pulte posted on X Tuesday. “If ‘Obama’ or ‘Biden’ did that (they didn’t), it would be nonstop news coverage. When President Trump does it, very few people report it.”
But FICO Score 10 T also considers “trended credit data and additional data such as rent, utility, and telecom payments, which are not currently considered as part of the Classic FICO score,” Fannie Mae noted in a January update on plans to transition to the new scores.
The move to require Fannie and Freddie to accept VantageScore 4.0 is a victory for the big three credit bureaus who developed it — Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. VantageScore claimed Tuesday that implementation of the new score will boost the eligible pool of mortgage applicants by 5 million borrowers.
The credit bureaus maintain files on consumers, tracking their debts and repayment history — information that’s fed into credit score algorithms developed by FICO and VantageScore to generate credit scores.
Fee increases by both Fair Isaac and the credit bureaus have been a source of frustration for lenders and their clients. But Pulte also backed down from the FHFA’s original proposal to move from tri-merge to bi-merge credit reporting, which would have allowed lenders to pull credit scores from two credit bureaus instead of three.
TransUnion had opposed plans to move to bi-merge reporting, claiming that using only two credit scores “will often result in an incomplete and inaccurate picture being painted of a potential borrower — particularly if a consumer’s most favorable set of credit data is the one that gets excluded.”
In a blog post last month, MBA President Bob Broeksmit characterized tri-merge reporting as “an anachronism from the days when there were significant disparities in coverage by the credit bureaus.”
Broeksmit said the MBA has been studying the feasibility of using a single credit report to score government-guaranteed loans, an approach that “would mirror that of most other consumer finance markets, including home equity loans and auto loans – which have seen success with this structure.”
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With the partnership, RLTYco CEO and cofounder Briggs Elwell will join the association’s board, and agents who subscribe to RLTYco will also have access to AREA membership through the company’s suite of services.
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The American Real Estate Association (AREA), an alternative that emerged last year to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), has partnered up with real estate services company RLTYco and made one of its cofounders a board member, the companies have informed Inman.
With the move, Briggs Elwell, RLTYco’s CEO and cofounder, will join AREA’s board, giving the company further insights into agent needs and giving AREA industry insight from a seasoned veteran who has been active in a variety of real estate endeavors.
Briggs Elwell | RLTYco
Elwell said the partnership came about because of a shared vision for the future of the industry.
“The alignment of efforts [by] us to provide services to the agent community and then the efforts of what Jason [Haber and Mauricio Umansky] were doing with the American Real Estate Association was just incredibly logical because we’re both working in the same talent pool, same industry and we’re just really aligned at the overarching goal of bettering the community,” Elwell told Inman.
Jason Haber, cofounder of AREA and a Compass-affiliated agent, said that as the trade organization ramps up for a period of expansion, they were looking for leaders who would help drive growth, and Elwell seemed like a clear asset to add to the team.
Jason Haber | Compass
“We’re at a point where we’re ready for our next phase, which is going to be rapid expansion, and when we go into expansion mode in this next phase, who do you want helping guide you?” Haber said. “Who are the players to help make you this nationwide hub to bring together people who may have differing opinions on where the industry needs to go, but share the same belief that there’s a lane for us to operate outside of NAR — not in competition with them, in some ways in collaboration — but to create our own voice and to say, ‘Here’s what we think is best for the industry. Here’s what we want to put out into the public square. Here are the things we can be doing better.’
“I think by bringing in someone of Briggs’ caliber, you’re going to see us attract a full swath from around the country of talent, both at the executive level, meaning CEOs, general counsels, people in the C-suite, to the agent community as well, that’s hungry for new voices to help galvanize and organize the industry.”
Elwell started off as a licensed agent and spent a significant portion of his early career working with New York City developer Related Companies, where he worked on the firm’s luxury rental portfolio. He also led small- to mid-size brokerages in New York City before launching RLTYco with Daniel Kennedy in 2021.
Because of his location in New York City, which does not have a multiple listing service (MLS), Elwell said he has never been a Realtor.
Mauricio Umansky | The Agency
“We’re excited to partner with RLTYco and welcome Briggs to the board,” Mauricio Umansky, cofounder of AREA and CEO of The Agency, said in a statement. “Agents deserve to set themselves up for success with resources and knowledge that are sometimes elusive based on where you are and how you choose to hang your license, and I’m a big fan of the work that RLTYco is doing.”
With the partnership, agents who sign up for RLTYco’s services — including commission advances, legal and tax assistance, and a healthcare marketplace — will now also have the option to become a member of AREA at a preferred price, which is yet to be determined. Haber told Inman that dues for a base membership are $20 for 2025, but 2026 dues have not been set yet and likely will not be announced for several months.
“I’m very excited to help push across the direction and efforts of the association,” Elwell told Inman. “But because of [this] relationship, we’re going to offer all the members preferred pricing, preferred access to things that we roll out as we build the company.”
RLTYco is also prepping to launch RLTY Blue, which is a benefits program tailored to real estate agents, akin to something like the benefits W2 employees receive through their employers or those received through certain credit cards, the company said. Earlier this year, the company raised $20 million in a Series A funding round.
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James Dwiggins is not shy when it comes to sharing his opinion about what the future of the real estate industry will be — if Compass’s private listings strategy prevails.
Inman caught up with the co-CEO of franchisor NextHome ahead of his appearance at Inman Connect San Diego at the end of this month to ask him about the potential outcomes of the debate over the National Association of Realtors’ Clear Cooperation Policy and Compass’s “three-phase marketing strategy,” which, at least initially, keeps listings off of multiple listing services to market them privately.
In Part 1 of this interview, below, Dwiggins lays out three possible paths for the industry, one of which he says is unavoidable, another that preserves the MLS, and another that blows up the industry and hands it over to Zillow. In Part 2, Dwiggins discusses what truly offering sellers options means and NAR’s role in MLS policy and in promoting Realtor value.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Inman: Everybody has their views on this whole private listings situation. But what I want to know from you is, what do you think is going to happen? Where is this going? What is the end result of this?
James Dwiggins: It’s going to go one of two paths. No. 1 is there will be massive litigation from this coming in time. The only reason why it hasn’t started yet is there’s not a big enough class. I’ve spoken to class-action lawyers who are like “this is easier to win than Burnett.”
They take the marketing material being used to push this. They take the numbers on the amount of people that are going into this status, the number of people who sold their listings off MLS. They’re going to take that data. They’re going to look at those numbers. They’re going to look at comps and what it should have sold for versus what it did.
Doesn’t matter whether the seller agreed to the price or not. Doesn’t matter what the documentation is. Just look at Burnett | Sitzer, same thing: They signed listing agreements agreeing to the commission compensation sharing. The point is, in the law, in the courts, the way this works is you just got to convince a jury.
They’re going to wait until the class is big enough and there will be massive litigation on people that are doing this. One hundred percent.
That is the foregone conclusion at this point. In 24 to 36 months, watch for litigation to occur.
Path No. 2 is Compass doesn’t get its way, and this whole game slows down, and it’s used selectively for sellers that legitimately need to do that, and we get back towards serving buyers and sellers correctly without manipulation of the market, providing transparency and doing what we spent 40 years to build, which is what I hope will happen.
Path 3 is Armageddon. This is the path that scares me the most. What nobody seems to understand, especially at Compass, is they’re too small to compete in this game if everybody decided to build a private listing network like Compass did. There’s nothing innovative about the three-phase marketing plan. There’s nothing innovative about the technology. It’s not like that can’t be duplicated very quickly.
If everybody went down the road of building private listing networks because that’s what they had to do based upon what this one company is pushing, then what happens? It’s absolutely catastrophic. You have the worst consumer experience ever created, where all this inventory is held back, trying to be sold internally, which is what this game is about. You don’t have access to it unless you’re working with one of the agents at that firm.
So consumers are going to sign buyer rep agreements with people that they didn’t want to sign. They didn’t know what they signed. You’re going to deal with litigation there.
Nobody knows what’s for sale. The value of the multiple listing services goes to hell in a hand basket. There’s all these deals done that aren’t on the MLS now, so you have no data that’s accurate for comps. Appraisals become a problem. Imagine that, where you’re trying to appraise, but the appraiser can’t use it because they don’t have access to data.
So we’ve got massive appraisal issues, we’ve got massive loan issues, and then the game of roll-up occurs, and it’s very clear what will happen if you don’t have enough inventory to be anything relevant in a market: You get consolidated into a company that does because the only way you get to see the inventory is working for one that has the inventory. You end up seeing probably 12 to 15 real estate brokerages in the U.S. that control 70 percent of the inventory. MLS is gone. Consumer experience gets totalled.
I’ll tell you who the biggest player is out of all of it: It’s Zillow. Zillow has a motive in all of this, obviously. They need inventory because inventory allows them to generate leads, and that’s part of their business model. But if that inventory is no longer available on Zillow, I can tell you exactly how they’ll get their inventory: They’ll tell every single agent that’s part of their lead network, “You have 72 hours to switch your license over to become a Zillow agent and bring all your inventory with us, or we’re going to shut off your entire lead pipeline.”
You think any agents have any loyalty to the brands they work for? Good luck!
They will absolutely leave every single one of these firms, including mine, and go to the business that’s driving all their revenue. Zillow becomes the largest real estate brokerage in 30 days in the U.S. with massive market share and massive eyeballs and they push all that business to their agents now. That’s the game that gets played.
The people that are playing this game do not understand the chess pieces on the board, and it would be a very bad thing for everybody: sellers, buyers, brokerages, agents, MLSs, associations. The only people that benefit are the top 10 companies, which just become even bigger than what they are.
That’s the ironic part about this whole thing that I just don’t even understand. EXp does 50 percent more deals than Compass does and has 50 percent more agents than Compass does too, just in the U.S. And they’re not wanting to do this game. They’re outwardly saying, “This is really, really bad for consumers and not good for the industry and not good for buyers and sellers.” You know who benefits the most if this game were to go down this road that Compass is playing? EXp does. They grow to double their size.
You see 95 percent of the industry not doing this because there’s historical perspective to understanding how bad that experience was. Brokers agreed a long time ago that this isn’t good, this game of “I have inventory, you don’t. I want to work with you, and I’ll work with you on this deal, but not another.” We got rid of that. We put it into a repository because it’s good for sellers and it’s good for buyers. It’s the only system in the world that operates the way it does. As imperfect as it is, it’s still the best. So, yeah, where does it end up? One of those three paths. One of them is good; the other two are scary.
Why do you think that companies like Compass, Howard Hanna, other brokerages that are pushing private listings, don’t see what you’re seeing?
Maybe they do. Hoby [Hanna] and Robert [Reffkin] are pretty smart people. I’m sure they understand exactly what they’re doing. They have their own initiative and motives to do stuff. I’m not against that. America’s capitalistic. I get it. Do you. I just don’t think it’s the right thing to do. Our jobs are to sit down, ask questions: What are the goals of the seller? Ninety-nine percent of sellers are going to say two things: highest price possible, least amount of time.
If the seller says I need privacy, then we provide a tool for that privacy.
In my company, we can have it so the address isn’t displayed online, so we can generate interest about your property, but they don’t know where the property is. So we’re getting the eyeballs, we’re getting consumer inquiries, we’re making sure we’re generating that interest.
The second way is, if you really don’t want that, we won’t put it online, but it’ll be available to every Realtor in the multiple listing service, which is going to represent 90 percent of all buyers. So we’re going to take care of that exposure, while also making sure that nobody knows you know anything about that property.
The third and the last scenario is we do an office exclusive, but I want to be clear with you, what that means is I’m working this internally. There’s no public marketing. We’re not sharing it. It’s going to take us longer. There’s less consumers, and if that’s your option you want, we can pick that.
That’s the only conversation you should be having with a seller in those particular examples. The rest of it is just marketing spin. It’s just a way to convince the seller to do it. It sounds great: “We’re going to test the price.” You can’t test price unless you have enough market share to actually have enough eyeballs to determine what the price of the home is. If there are 10 potential buyers for a property and one of them is represented by an agent in the same brokerage, but nine are represented by agents in other companies, how can you test the price if they don’t know the property exists? It’s just supply-and-demand economics.
So there is a path for this. It should be asking questions, providing tools, letting the seller choose without influencing them on those decisions. That is your fiduciary responsibility. That is what 95 percent of people are doing.
Anything beyond that, where, if you can get a buyer represented by an agent in your brokerage, the brokerage benefits because you’re getting both sides of the commission. Literally, on their website, [it says] “Compass Private Exclusives. Work with a Compass agent to see private exclusives.” That’s a lead-gen tool that is designed to get people to inquire specifically to work with you to see those properties. It’s not a seller choice thing. You’re using it as a way to gain more listing inventory, gain more buyer inventory, recruit more people to it, which they’re not shy about if you read the statements the senior management team’s making.
In Scenario No. 3, what happens to your company?
I either get really big or I consolidate with someone else. The numbers are really simple. In our calculations, if you have less than 10 percent market share in a local MLS — thinking of brokerage now — you won’t survive. You’d have to team up with somebody else. Because if everybody’s holding the inventory back, and you can’t show your buyers that inventory, then all you have is one side of the deal. You’ve only got listing inventory, so you’re still having to share that because you don’t have enough. You’re just not big enough in size. It’s a monopoly game.
It sounded like Scenario No. 1, the litigation, you thought was pretty much inevitable. How do you get to Scenario No. 2?
The industry sticks up for what’s right. MLSs enforce these rules. If you’re not going to play by the rules, then you get fined. And if you get fined and want to keep doing it, then get out. It’s that simple.
You either play by the rules like everybody else, or don’t and don’t be part of the MLS.
Good luck. But that’s fine. It’s your choice. You do it.
But you don’t get to [see] all the listing inventory and then not share your inventory. That’s not how IDX [Internet Data Exchange] works. That’s literally the exact opposite of it. There’s a reason why these rules are in place. You can’t selectively choose who gets to view who gets your inventory in IDX. That’s actually for antitrust reasons. If you’re going to put it in the MLS, everybody gets access to it. You can’t be like “Zillow doesn’t get it. Or NextHome doesn’t get it.” Doesn’t work that way.
You’ve mentioned before that this private listing strategy doesn’t do as well in a buyer’s market.
Not at all.
It does seem like the market is not doing well at least in some places for sellers. What happens to this whole controversy if that becomes more widespread?
Well, two things to put into finer point: If Zillow’s listing ban is overturned and they can’t enforce it, then you move towards Scenario 3. That’s the Armageddon.
So literally, the industry’s future is depending upon this ban that Zillow has in place, and that’s why Compass is suing them.
If Zillow’s listing ban stays in place, this three-phase marketing plan that Compass has becomes very little used because there’s not a scenario where you want to explain to a seller that if we do X, Y and Z, your listing will never be shown on Zillow. That ain’t going to fly.
So really, everything hinges on the Zillow listing ban being able to be kept in place — and technically Rocket’s ban in September — or not. That will be the decider.
