If there’s one particular person in our actual property business that I actually really feel empathy for, it’s Jonathan Miller.
Let me clarify.
Jonathan is the appraiser behind the market reviews most of our business quotes. I first met him within the late ‘90s, when he was simply beginning to put them collectively. Again then, his greatest downside was unhealthy knowledge. Right now, his greatest downside is that a few of the knowledge is disappearing altogether.
Brokers usually don’t share confidential data. Until, in fact, it’s to advertise their private model or get press.
Observe: everytime you see a information report of a sale and it says the agent “declined to remark,” it usually means the agent known as the reporter, gave them the data, and informed them to not use their title.
As the information grew to become much less reliant on brokers, the information bought higher.
After I began CORE in 2005, one of many first issues I did was create The CORE RealTime Report. It was the primary of its form report to trace “contracts signed” somewhat than “closed gross sales.”
I felt then, and nonetheless really feel now, that for those who’re seeking to gauge the well being of an actual property market, one of the best second to trace that knowledge is when a contract is definitely signed. Closings let you know what occurred months in the past. Contracts let you know what is going on proper now.
We couldn’t all the time get the contract quantity, however we had the final asking worth and the contract-signing date, and we did our greatest.
When the RealTime Report got here out, The New York Occasions ran an article about monitoring contract knowledge to get a greater pulse available on the market. I used to be quoted as saying, “The most effective factor for each the patron and the agent is full transparency.”
The day the article got here out, I obtained an aggravated name from the CEO of one of many largest brokerages within the metropolis, lambasting me for exposing weaknesses available in the market.
I argued that the quicker the shopper bought educated concerning the market, the extra successfully we might signify them. I all the time believed that transparency was good for the patron and, in flip, good for brokers. An informed shopper is an effective shopper. Proper?
Seems—not everybody agreed. Why? As a result of the information informed the story they didn’t need you to listen to.
Now, I’m not going to faux I’m a knowledge purist. I’ve used it to inform the story I wished.
Among the finest advertising and marketing books I ever learn was Methods to Lie with Statistics, a traditional 1954 e book by Darrell Huff that explains how numbers and graphs will be manipulated to inform the story you need them to inform.
The e book impressed me to make use of business knowledge to showcase our experience.
At CORE, we weren’t the most important. We weren’t the oldest. However the knowledge proved that we offered extra actual property per agent than every other firm available in the market.
So I went with it, and that’s the stat I pushed to inform our story: When you have been seeking to rent an professional agent, rent a CORE agent.
That’s utilizing statistics to inform your story. I’ll personal that.
There’s a distinction between utilizing statistics to inform the story you need to inform and ensuring the statistics by no means exist within the first place.
Market reviews can solely report available on the market they will see. And more and more, elements of our market are being deliberately hidden.
Brokerages are constructing non-public itemizing networks, holding stock inside their very own partitions and controlling who will get to see it and when.
Some sellers have all the time legitimately wanted privateness. Celebrities. Public figures. Individuals going by divorces. Individuals who merely don’t need the world understanding their enterprise.
That’s completely different.
Privateness is one thing a shopper asks for.
Controlling data is one thing the business does for itself.
And this isn’t simply Jonathan’s downside. Each vendor needs to know what their residence is value. Each purchaser needs to know whether or not they’re overpaying. Each developer needs to know what they need to construct and what they will cost for it. Each lender needs to know what they’re lending in opposition to.
All of them depend on the identical factor – data.
That is what I discover so unusual about the place we’re at the moment.
Shoppers have by no means had extra data. They will see gross sales historical past, taxes, ground plans, worth adjustments, mortgage estimates, and virtually every thing else from their cellphone.
On the similar time, members of our business have determined the reply is to provide them much less.
The irony is that know-how has made the true property market extra clear than at any level in historical past, whereas sure actual property companies are shifting in the other way.
We’re turning the clock again 30 years. Proper again to the place Jonathan began, when the one individuals who knew what was actually occurring have been those with a purpose to not let you know.
And once we conceal stock from one another, we don’t simply conceal it from different brokers.
We conceal it from consumers.
We conceal it from sellers attempting to know the worth of their very own houses.
And in the end, we conceal it from the very individuals attempting to assist us perceive precisely what is going on available in the market.
What we miss is that Jonathan would possibly simply be one among our strongest allies, not our biggest adversary.
Good knowledge doesn’t make a market good or unhealthy.
It simply tells us what is going on.
We will all select the stats that inform the story we would like; I definitely have.
However earlier than we will lie with statistics, we not less than want the information.
Perhaps as an alternative of blaming Jonathan once we don’t like what the numbers say, we should always ensure that he has all of the numbers.
This visitor column was written by Shaun Osher, Founding father of CORE Group Advertising and creator of the Padkos Weblog. It was initially printed October 5, 2026, at Housing Notes.
