Do Morons In A Hurry Buy Real Estate?

from the how-confusing-is-this? dept

I was going to pass on this particular story, but so many people have been submitting it that it seemed worth at least a quick post. Real estate giant Re/max apparently has some lawyers with free time on their hands now that the housing market has collapsed. It seems like they must, because they felt it was necessary to oppose the trademark application of a small real estate agency in North Carolina that goes by the name Rehava. Remax and Rehava aren't particularly similar, and neither are their logos:

But, that hasn't stopped Re/max from complaining. It goes beyond just the "Re" at the beginning. Apparently Re/max lawyers think that the line somewhere near the "e" will confuse people. And then, it just gets ridiculous:

"If you chop the top off of the 'h,' you (almost) have the 'm' in Re/Max. The next letter is an 'a,' and if you take the 'v' then you have half of an 'x.' "

This certainly seems like a situation where the moron in a hurry test should apply. Tragically, however, our legal system never seems to be in much of a hurry, and so its costing Rehava plenty of time and money to respond to the opposition by Re/max.

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Exaggerating The Mobile Threat To Google

from the sorry,-don't-see-it dept

There's a Business Week article making the rounds saying that it's not Microsoft or Yahoo that's a real threat to Google, but the rise of the mobile web, which will somehow shrink ad inventory and cause headaches for Google. It's a nice theory, but it's hard to square with reality. Increasing use of the mobile screen is hardly likely to decrease usage of a full computer screen. If anything, it will likely make desktop computing more useful in some cases. The article also makes a few other questionable statements. First, it points out that the mobile screen is smaller, so there's less ad inventory, and then it points out that the growing acceptance of the mobile web is due to the web browser on the iPhone. That sounds good, but the points contradict each other. The success of the iPhone's browser is due to the fact that it presents a full (not limited) web browsing experience -- so it doesn't really limit the inventory available to Google. Furthermore, even if the inventory was limited (which seems unlikely) that's not necessarily a bad thing for Google. Google's success has been based on making ads more relevant -- not just more available. This was what resulted in so much confusion during Google's recent earnings announcement. Google had made some changes to drive more relevant clickthroughs -- and while that may lower actual clickthroughs, it increases revenue. So, even if inventory is limited, if Google is still the best at making ads relevant, it will do just fine.

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Are Newspaper Troubles Just Cyclical Rather Than Fundamental?

from the could-be-wishful-thining dept

While it's been quite natural for many folks to talk about the troubles facing the newspaper industry, it is worth noting that the newspaper business has remained quite profitable over the years. That, combined with a few other factors, has an analyst at Credit Suisse saying that the newspaper business is facing a cyclical slump, rather than as the result of a fundamental problem in the business. Thus, the analyst claims, the business should bounce back, perhaps as soon as towards the end of 2008. One factor in his argument is that troubles in the industry are due to the slump in real estate advertising, and newspaper fortunes should pick up as the real estate market begins to turnaround. While it does seem like pessimism over the newspaper business is overblown, this report is not particularly convincing. First of all, the downturn in newspaper stocks seems to have predated the real estate crisis by quite a large amount -- suggesting that the real estate troubles are only likely to exacerbate other problems. Furthermore, while the report does highlight how newspapers need to become more digitally focused, it's really not as simple as just "going digital." As we've seen time and time again, many newspapers have struggled with the transition, because they still view themselves as newspapers rather than news organizations, and they still seem to take a rather elitist view of themselves as gatekeepers, rather than as facilitators, helping people uncover what's important to them, rather than what the gatekeepers think is newsworthy. So, while we're hopeful that newspapers will figure it out, this particular report doesn't provide much support for the idea that newspapers are managing the shift well.

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If You Want To Know Your Neighborhood, You're Best Off Going Online

from the ask-the-net dept

As Steve Levitt explains in Freakonomics, the primary power held by real estate agents is their control over information. Bizarrely, he compares them to the Ku Klux Klan (because they also derived their power from information), which is an absurd overstatement that seems mainly aimed at hitting readers on an emotional level. Nonetheless, the point is valid, which is why real estate agents fear the potential for the web to circumvent their control on real estate information. Recently, real estate site Zillow introduced a new offering to provide prospective buyers more information about their communities, while another site, StreetAdvisors, is introducing more tools to deliver the same thing. These have the potential to be significant, since real estate agents are limited legally in what they can say about a neighborhood. Seeing as this is crucial stuff for prospective buyers or renters, knowing that this information is available on the web but not through their agent will only hasten the industry's shift towards the web.

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Zillow Goes After An Area That Real Estate Agents Can't Touch

from the too-hot-to-handle dept

The rise of online real estate services like Zillow and Redfin has been a thorn in the side of real estate agents, who have voiced displeasure at the affront to their cartel. The basic tension stems from the fact that these services attempt to get around the professionals' control over real estate information. Now Zillow is looking to attack the industry from another angle. For various legal and ethical reasons, real estate agents aren't supposed to talk about certain details of a neighborhood, like demographics or crime rates, even though this stuff is pretty pertinent to would-be buyers. So in addition to its basic real estate data, Zillow plans to launch 6,500 new sites based around specific communities, where users can exchange information that they can't get from real estate agents. Going in this direction clearly makes a lot of sense, since it's a weak spot for real estate agents. If Zillow can use its existing position to become a home base for this kind of information, it should prove useful to people in the real estate market.

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