by Zillow | Jul 29, 2024 | Industry, News Feed
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Several days after Move and CoStar Group’s latest filings, former Realtor.com editor James Kaminsky’s counsel filed a new statement outlining Kaminsky’s recollection of events and stating his support of CoStar’s request for expedited discovery.
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“I have not engaged in any work at CoStar that competes with Move’s News & Insights group, nor have I assisted anyone at CoStar in doing so,” the filing read. “I am currently on administrative leave. I have no access to CoStar’s computer system and am doing no work for CoStar other than assisting with the response to Move’s lawsuit.”
In the 36-page declaration of support, Kaminsky detailed his “surprise” layoff from Move, his attempts to delete “financial, personal and medical information” from Move-owned devices and email accounts before returning them to the company, and the reason for accessing documents Move said included trade secrets. The former editor also explained his decision to work for CoStar Group, saying it was a good opportunity in an “extremely tight” media job market.
“My new job at CoStar is entirely different from my prior job at Move. I readily disclosed my new job and its responsibilities to several people at Move; I was proud of it,” the filing read. “I never imagined that Move would have any issue with it at all and certainly never tried to hide it from Move.”
“Given all of the Move personnel who I met with and described my new role, I am shocked and surprised that Move informed the Court and claimed in the press that I am engaged in an effort to build a news department at CoStar to rival the News & Insights department I ran at Move,” it continued. “It is again simply not true.”
Kaminsky said Move notified him of the layoff on Jan. 10, noting that his last day with the company would be Jan. 12. In those two days, Kaminsky said he began downloading personal information from Move-owned devices, including his 2023 pay stubs, old W-2s and credit card information. He also downloaded recent performance reviews, Christmas gift cards from colleagues, pictures of his new home and medical information for his two children, both of whom have special needs.
After securing his personal information, Kaminsky said he realized he needed to “remember the high points” of his 8.5-year career at Realtor.com, so he added his personal email address to several News & Insights Google documents in anticipation that Move would shutter his work email address.
“There was nothing secretive here: I gave myself access by inviting myself to them with my named email, [redacted]” the filing read. “In my experience at the company, we would not infrequently see names appear on documents that we did not expect to be there – we would just remove them. It was not a very secure system.”
“The fact that I could grant permission to my personal email address [redacted], not a Move.com email address, to access the documents suggested to me that the documents were and are not highly significant proprietary documents,” it added. “Certainly, I did not expect that anyone at Move would be concerned by my access to these documents. The documents did not, in my view, contain highly sensitive materials.”
Kaminsky said the files at the center of Move’s theft of trade secrets claim included sheets he created outlining his team’s salary and bonuses, an ongoing list of Realtor.com News & Insights stories, a “2022 or 2023” presentation on audience and revenue projections, and two other files with passwords to third-party subscriptions, WordPress instructions, and staff contact numbers.
Kaminsky said he “briefly viewed” the document with salary information to help him calculate an appropriate asking salary during his job search and clicked the document with audience and revenue projections, not knowing what it contained. However, after looking, he said it contained an audience presentation that “[jogged] his memory” about previous work accomplishments. He said he accessed both of those files before starting his position with CoStar on March 11.
The next time he accessed a Move-owned file was on May 31, when he needed help calculating the correct tax withholding for his CoStar paychecks. During the search for old paystubs in the emails he’d forwarded himself from his Move email account, he came across emails notifying him of the Move-owned documents to which he added his personal address and opened them.
“I recall being surprised that I still had access to the documents and that the links were still active,” the filing read. “I clicked through the documents to see what they were and to satisfy some basic curiosity. None of the documents were relevant to my work at CoStar.”
Kaminsky said he rapidly clicked through some of the documents, noting that a few were hundreds of pages long. Although he accessed those documents, Kaminsky said he never used them for his work at CoStar or shared them with CoStar colleagues or leadership, as his job with CoStar focuses on managing a team that writes listing descriptions for high-end condominium and co-op buildings in NYC.
“My job at Move was to manage a department in which we identified, wrote, and published news articles designed to draw traffic to the Realtor.com website regarding a wide range of economic and business issues relating to residential real estate and more pop culture articles about celebrities and their homes,” the filing read. “The writings are connected on the website to listings relating to those buildings; it is not a stand-alone feature designed to drive traffic to the website.”
“To my knowledge, CoStar does not track traffic at this time to this portion of Homes.com,” it continued. “I have never seen any statistics about audience traffic, and I have never been asked to focus on growing Internet traffic.”
Kaminsky said he accessed one final document on June 9, the day Move said it became aware of Kaminsky’s actions. That document, he said, was titled, “News & Insights content decks.” The link, and several others, was dead, he said.
“To be clear, I no longer have access to any of the four documents that, in its Motion for Preliminary Injunction, Move alleges contain trade secret information. I did not print the documents, save them externally or otherwise preserve them in my records,” the filing read. “I have never shared the records with anyone at CoStar, or used them in any capacity in the course of my work for CoStar or in any way in competition with Move.”
“To establish that I have no access to any of the documents Move alleges contain trade secrets, I have already provided my work and personal computers and electronic devices to a forensic examiner who I understand CoStar and my counsel retained for the purpose of establishing the facts relating to the Complaint and the Motion for Preliminary Injunction and supporting our defense against the baseless claims Move has asserted against CoStar and me,” it added.
CoStar has put Kaminsky on administrative leave as the Virginia-based company battles Move over its July 23 ex-parte request (i.e., the expedition of an order without giving the other party time to oppose) for an Order of Protection preventing the disclosure of confidential and trade secret information during the discovery process. Especially sensitive documents, Move said, should only be available to Move’s counsel and CoStar Group’s outside counsel.
CoStar answered back by requesting expedited discovery and the rescheduling of the preliminary injunction hearing from Aug. 15 to Sept. 19. In its filing, CoStar’s counsel said the expedited discovery would allow both parties to access unredacted versions of previous filings and accompanying exhibits so each side can submit a “more fulsome briefing” ahead of the preliminary injunction hearing.
CoStar leadership, including General Counsel Gene Boxer, has framed Move’s lawsuit as a “PR stunt” in the midst of an intensifying battle over website traffic performance. Meanwhile, Realtor.com has been reserved in its commentary over the suit, with a spokesperson saying the company doesn’t file lawsuits “frivolously” and will “litigate in the courts, not the media.”
A judge reviewed Move and CoStar’s ex-parte requests on Monday. A ruling is expected soon.
Read Kaminsky’s statement below:
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by Kendall Bonner | Jul 29, 2024 | Industry, News Feed
Luxury homebuyers are used to paying big bucks for quality service. That’s partly why several Luxury Connect panelists in Las Vegas think the NAR settlement won’t make a huge splash in the higher price points.
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The impending changes from the national commission settlements continue to confuse and worry many real estate agents — especially in the lower and middle price tiers.
But whatever impact the NAR deal ends up having on the market for first-time homebuyers and typical sellers, luxury agents and brokers who spoke Monday at the Inman Luxury Connect real estate conference in Las Vegas said they don’t anticipate high-dollar buyers would be inclined to skimp on their agent’s commission in light of the change.
“One of the things about luxury buyers: They’re very accustomed to paying for expertise,” said Jennifer Lind of Coldwell Banker. “They’ve got a lot of trusted advisors that are managing multiple pieces of their world. And … most of our agents feel very comfortable in their ability to negotiate.”
In other words, if pressed to cover their agent’s fee themselves, luxury buyers are likely to foot the bill.
Tammy Fahmi, senior vice president of global servicing and strategy for Sotheby’s International Realty, said that she still thinks that luxury sellers are unlikely to take a hardline approach — even with hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line.
“I think that remains to be seen,” Fahmi said. “We’ve always been consistent in saying that we believe that there are many reasons why sellers should continue to offer buyer broker compensation, one of which is to make sure as many buyers are exposed to [a listing] as possible.”
Thad Wong, co-CEO of Christie’s International Real Estate, said that the commission changes are not meaningfully impacting business or agent-client relationships.
In conversations with clients, Wong said, the commission changes are “coming up much less [often] than the way agents feel. If one customer talks with an agent about the lawsuit, it feels like everyone’s doing it because it brings so much anxiety.
“So it’s much more of an industry issue than it is a market issue.”
In most markets, Wong said he doesn’t think the lawsuits are going to have the impact that is most feared. He also said that these changes are coming at a fortunate time for both the luxury market and homes in lower price tiers.
“Aside from Austin and some places in the country, we still have low inventory in many major markets, and we still have low luxury inventory,” Wong said. “So it’s a very, very good time because the buyer agent is only more significant right now in finding properties and searching.”
Echoing Wong, Fahmi said that Sotheby’s has not seen any substantial issues with clients navigating the upcoming changes, and doesn’t expect them to pop up in great numbers in the luxury space.
But all of these panelists on Monday agreed that this moment represents an opportunity for luxury agents to get more organized and prepared to defend the value they bring to the buyer side of the transaction. If they do, luxury buyers will be able and willing to pay for their services if needed, they said.
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by Jonathan Pressman | Jul 29, 2024 | Industry, News Feed
Panelists at Inman Luxury Connect Monday argued that good marketing in the luxury segment is all about telling stories that speak to a specific type of consumer.
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Early in his career, Jonathan Spears had to figure out how to market his stretch of Florida.
Spears works on the Florida panhandle and said on stage Monday during Inman Luxury Connect that eastern Florida, in a totally different time zone, has historically received much of the attention and traffic from higher-end buyers. His task as an agent, then, was to put his part of the state on the radar of people looking for second or third or fourth homes.
Then he hit on an idea: He started describing his region as the “Hamptons of Florida.”
“I knew that my luxury client base would gravitate to that,” he told the Connect audience.
The name stuck and soon began appearing in various media outlets. Today, the first result in a Google search for “Hamptons of Florida” is an AI-generated blurb pinpointing the exact area Spears covers. And Spears — who is with Compass — has since managed to grow his business into a thriving team that is effectively self-sufficient, in no small part because he has managed to effectively market his region.
Spears’ point, and his advice to the packed ballroom Monday, was that succeeding in luxury real estate involves “really understanding how to articulate the market’s story” in a way that connects with a desired audience.
From left to right, moderator Holly Meyer Lucas, Nancy Almodovar, Georgina Jacobson and Jonathan Spears at Inman Luxury Connect Monday. Credit: AJ Canaria
Spears’ fellow panelists Monday made similar points. Georgina Jacobson of Coldwell Banker works in Newport Beach, California, and told the audience that she recently redesigned her website. And her goal in the project was, essentially, storytelling.
“We focused on telling people about Newport Beach,” she said.
Later during the session, Houston-based Nancy Almodovar of Nan and Company Properties described how she uses social media in marketing and storytelling.
“We all use social media; it’s all about how you use it,” she said. “It’s very important that what you put out is what you want others to see.”
Almodovar said that her social media profiles are filled with images of real luxury properties in her market. But she cautioned that some agents are apparently tempted to present a false image, posting shots of luxury cars for example, when they don’t own or sell those cars. She advised against such posts and indicated that authenticity matters when it comes to storytelling.
As the session concluded, Spears shared tips for winning media coverage, noting that he spends a lot of time meeting with journalists, and advised building relationships with the people who cover real estate. Having a great property can help facilitate those relationships.
“Having a marketable moment allows you to create relationships with a journalist,” Spears concluded. “The press loves to devour the biggest deals in the market.”
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by Molly McKinley | Jul 29, 2024 | Industry, News Feed
Luxury Connect panelists said that a generational wealth transfer is lifting more millennials into the luxury real estate market, and it’s already changing how luxury brokerages are working to attract clients.
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Evolving buyer profiles and advancements in tech are creating substantial opportunities for luxury brokerage operations, a panel of experts argued at the Inman Luxury Connect real estate conference Monday in Las Vegas. And while some luxury clients still prefer to keep a low profile, more clients than ever are coming from a generation of clients who grew up familiar with social media and are excited to see their listings featured in prominent, glitzy social media campaigns.
The luxury real estate sector is increasingly bringing high-dollar millennial buyers into the fold, and agents are making meaningful inroads with these clients by crafting high-end social media experiences.
However, this more tech-centric focus isn’t only about attracting a new generation of clients. Luxury agents and brokers are also taking advantage of generative AI and other advanced computing tools to streamline their operations, target consumers with ads and hone messaging in record time.
“We have to keep in mind that the transfer of wealth is going to the millennials — it’s going to the next generation,” Quiana Watson of Watson Realty Co. in Atlanta said. “And when you look at how they want to be treated and how they interact on social media, it is a big deal. So we can no longer operate real estate the way we used to.”
The transfer of wealth is likely to be staggering by some estimates, launching many younger adults into the thick of the luxury market who have not participated before.
Ranjeet Guptara, financial advisor at UBS | Photo by AJ Canaria Creative Services
UBS financial advisor Ranjeet Guptara told the audience of luxury real estate professionals that adults over the age of 75 control about a quarter of the nation’s wealth. As a result, it’s expected that $87 trillion of wealth will pass to younger generations in the next 10-20 years, Guptara said.
Some of the early effects of this transfer are already leaving a mark on luxury agents and brokers like Watson, Dawn McKenna of Coldwell Banker, Paul Benson of Engel & Völkers and Bryce Pennel of Douglas Elliman, who shared their on-the-ground experience with Inman Luxury Connect attendees.
The increasing benefits of reaching potential buyers and clients on social media come at a welcome moment when luxury brokerages can benefit from focusing more on marketing and less on lead generation, Benson said.
“I’m not a big fan of lead generation,” Benson said, “but I am a big fan of getting that home in front of the right people, wherever that is. And yes, you have to spend a lot of money to do it. But you also have to communicate that you’re doing it.
“So that’s where Instagram, I think, and other social media channels, come in to really make sure the client knows what you’re doing.”
Watson said she has folded her firm’s social media promotional muscle into her pitches to potential clients — something that younger clients in particular have been receptive to.
“I show them those markers of how my clients come back, the equity they’ve appreciated and how they’re able to continue on, but they’re going to have that social media experience,” she said.
Newer tech features — from ChatGPT to back-end AI solutions — have allowed Watson to save updating templates, reduce expenses managing her database and improve how she is able to reach potential clients with targeted ads, she said.
All that is being embraced by others in the industry, Benson said. However, they are not yet a substitute for good, old-fashioned communication with potential clients, he cautioned.
“The CRMs, the AI, the ability to do the virtual staging, ChatGPT not just for descriptions but for business plans — that’s all great,” Benson said. “But the telephone. I don’t think there’s been a time since I’ve done this in 20 years that clients had more questions about our industry.”
McKenna said she is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on new tech lately. But like Benson, she’s continued to have success through old-school techniques as well, such as holding curated events at a luxury listing that help expand her database.
“It has really proved to be very fruitful in terms of results,” McKenna said of these event efforts.
And even in this age of social media — which Pennel said he has leaned into — much of his L.A. luxury business still comes from referrals. Relationships remain key to success at every level of real estate, he said.
by Chris Drayer | Jul 29, 2024 | Industry, News Feed
Remodeling marketplace Fixr’s 2024 home design survey revealed homebuyers are prioritizing organization and energy-saving features, alongside open and hybrid floor plans.
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Although all-white cabinetry, speckled granite countertops and subway tiles have fallen from grace, there’s one thing today’s homebuyers can’t get enough of: kitchen islands.
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In remodeling marketplace Fixr’s 2024 home design survey, 61 percent of homebuilding and remodeling experts said kitchen islands are homebuyers’ most-requested feature, followed by walk-in pantries (43 percent), laundry rooms (31 percent), patios (30 percent), hardwood flooring (28 percent) and multi-zone HVAC systems (28 percent).
Full bathrooms on the main level, solar panels and landscaping, and Energy Star windows rounded out the top 10, with a fourth of experts saying those features made a home more desirable. The survey didn’t discuss the return on investment of these features; however, a 2019 Zillow study said minor kitchen updates — such as installing a new island — provide an ROI of 81.1 percent.
“A kitchen island has many perks, improving both the look and usefulness of your kitchen, as well as allowing bar seating,” the Fixr survey read. “It gives you extra countertop space for cooking and prepping meals, making things more efficient and organized.”
“Plus, with built-in storage options, an island helps keep your kitchen tidy by providing additional cabinets and drawers,” it added. “This makes sense considering 83 percent of experts said storage was the biggest kitchen priority in 2024.”
After kitchen islands, walk-in pantries are the second most coveted feature as they keep over-counter cupboards from becoming cluttered and offer additional food storage space.
“Continuing the theme of storage as a must, walk-in pantries are set to impress home buyers when looking around a potential new home this year,” the survey explained. “With its spacious design, a walk-in pantry helps reduce clutter by providing plenty of shelves and storage options. It gives you ample space to store food and kitchen supplies, keeping everything neat and easily accessible.”
Beyond features that maximize storage and organization, such as a dedicated laundry room and fully covered patio, professionals said buyers desire energy-saving features that reduce utility costs. The top eco-friendly feature homebuyers want is a multi-zone HVAC system, which enables homebuyers to set separate temperatures for each part of their home.
“It allows for precise temperature control in different areas or rooms, ensuring everyone stays comfortable. By only heating or cooling the spaces in use, a multi-zone system can reduce energy consumption and lower utility bills,” the survey read. “A multi-zone HVAC system enhances overall climate control, making your living environment more pleasant year-round.”
Beyond storage and energy management, Fixr’s survey respondents said homebuyers still favor open floor plans (53 percent). Hybrid floor plans (47 percent) are gaining traction as well since they give buyers access to the flow of an open floor plan with several dedicated closed spaces.
“Hybrid floor plans are great, as you get the benefit of open space (larger rooms, connectedness), but also the opportunity to provide for quieter moments, perhaps with a separate dining room or TV room that has doors,” Lewis Schoeplein Architects Principal Toni Lewis told Fixr. “This seems to be where many families have landed on the ‘ideal’ floor plan.”
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