‘Unfiltered’: It’s time to make big moves — not ‘cry and whine’ 

Editor's note: The Real Estate Insiders Unfiltered podcast explores the people and forces that shape the real estate industry. Check out our top takeaways and watch the latest episode from NextHome CEO James Dwiggins and Keith Robinson, NextHome's chief strategic officer.

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On the latest episode of Real Estate Insiders Unfiltered, industry consultant and thought leader Jack Miller dives into the newly released Opportunity Report — a follow-up to 2015's DANGER Report, which eerily predicted many of the challenges facing residential real estate today — and zeroes in on some key opportunities for the future.

Miller, president and CEO of T3 Sixty, described the report as a "grand strategy document" that can help industry leaders identify the opportunities that make sense for their business. (Note: T3 Sixty and Real Estate News share a founder, Stefan Swanepoel.)

A critical juncture: Opportunities arise during periods of change, Miller noted. "And this is one of those periods. This is a time in our industry that we will refer back to again and again and again. 'Remember when this happened and that company and that organization made a big move because of the opportunity it created?' And that's where we want to focus people."

The alternative? It's not pretty. "We can cry and whine about how things were better in the past, and we can try to hold on to them. But that is a very weak approach to anything, right? What happened is what happened." 

Don't get mad, get moving: Looking for someone to blame — lawyers, NAR, even your own agents —  means staying stuck in the past, Miller said. "We can be mad at everybody, or we can go, 'How do I take this moment and make value out of it for my company or my organization?'" 

And Miller hopes leaders take heed this time. Too many of them, he said, ignored the threats outlined in the DANGER Report. Consider "marginal agents," a risk identified a decade ago: "I think we can argue that the reputation of the industry has been dramatically impacted by practices that come out of agents that aren't very well trained. And that's not all their fault. It's the industry's fault."

On commissions and Clear Cooperation: Miller noted that, based on the dozens of interviews that went into the report, some opportunities — like decoupling commissions — were clearer than others. 

"Most of the leaders we talked to were like, yeah, just get over it. We just need to decouple and move on because that's been settled at this point."  

As for the CCP, "we did not hear a clear signal," Miller acknowledged — a reflection of the ongoing debate over the policy. "What the industry decides to value and focus on is what will win." 

On the MLS/association relationship: Unlike the CCP, there was a consensus among industry leaders regarding the separation of MLSs and associations, Miller said. The MLS should be "a true business data organization. That was very clear, like get the association out of MLS operations, control, governance, all that as much as possible. They could still be owners. But get out and let the MLS run."