On August 9, 2026, our colleague, mentor, and dear friend Susanna “Susie” Schevill passed away at her family home in Berkeley at the age of 77, following a five-year battle with progressive supranuclear palsy [...]

Last month, D.J. Grubb — President of The Grubb Company, fourth-generation East Bay native, and steward of the brokerage his father and uncle founded in 1967 — and Patrick MacCartee were both appointed to the Board of Directors of the Bridge Association of Realtors, which operates bridgeMLS, the cooperative listing platform serving the East Bay and surrounding Bay Area [...]

Assault on Clear Cooperation, Part 2

BATTLE LINES FOR THE NATIONAL BROKERAGES
As I ended Part 1 of this series, third party aggregator sites like Zillow and Homes.com, as well as several national brokerages, had drawn battle lines around the National Association of Realtors' Clear Cooperation Policy. Many of the brokerages created their [...]

Private Listing Networks and the Clear Cooperation Policy, Part 1

Over the past few weeks we have seen a new round big changes in the real estate industry. In August there was a kerfuffle over commissions and Buyer Broker Agreements. This time it is the seller side of the [...]

Why in the heck do I have to sign this?

Well, here we are on Day 4 of the Brave New World of Real Estate. Whew. This has been a 9-month Odyssey of training and preparing our Agents for this time.

So again, let me give you a recap of why we are here:

• The lawsuits really had nothing to do with commissions to Agents or Sherman Anti-Trust; those arguments were the gasoline to fuel the engine of the
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Introduction

As you have probably heard from the news media, there will be sweeping changes nationwide in the way Real Estate sales are conducted. These changes were the result of several Class Action lawsuits that finally came to trial at the end of last [...]

So just how wrong can one person be?

At the end of every year, for the last 30 years, I go through the same exercise. I dust off my crystal ball and try to predict the real estate market for the coming. You would think that with the systemic and unpredictable shocks to the system brought by COVID that I would have learned my lesson. But I [...]

Since COVID-19 hit the world and our Real Estate Market, I have focused mainly of the Single-Family home market as impacted by COVID-19 and our recovery from the systemic shock of our first Shelter In Place orders. But recently, I have been hounded by questions about the Condo market: how bad was the crash in 2020; will it continue; when will the recovery occur? This month let's talk a little about the Condo market.

The National Association of Realtors has released their nationwide housing statistics for the month of June. As you can see, the 1970's song from the 5th Dimension is playing all across the country... "Up, Up and Away in my Beautiful [...]

Public Open Houses, Re-opening the Economy and a Return to Normal

It is now official; on June 15th, the clouds will part, the sun will shine again, the birds will be singing and the State will fully reopen. In the meantime, we were given sudden notice mid-May that all Public Open Houses could immediately resume with certain modifications. [...]