NAR fine-tunes its 3-year plan, fast-tracking execution and trimming governance

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) released its first quarterly update on the 2026–2028 Strategic Plan on Tuesday, outlining early progress on initiatives tied to affordable housing, the Realtor brand and broker relationships. In the first quarter of implementation, NAR said it initiated abo

Senate questions Warsh on $100M-plus holdings and Fed ethics

Kevin Warsh, President Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as the 17th chairman of the Federal Reserve, faced sharp questioning from senators on Tuesday at his confirmation hearing. Warsh asserted that he would not be the president’s “sock puppet” when determining interest rate decisions. Warsh, a forme

Why cost discipline is replacing cost cutting in apartment operations

Costs are climbing faster than many operators expected, and teams are actively trying to figure out how to keep up without creating new problems in the process. The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis found that more than half of all operating expense (OpEx) inflation since 2020 ties back to propert

10 myths loan originators believe about reverse mortgages — and the reality that could change their business

Every day, about 10,000 Americans turn 65. That pace is expected to continue for another seven to eight years. Collectively, senior homeowners are sitting on a record $14.6 trillion in housing wealth. That’s not a niche. It’s a wave of new business that most purchase-loan originators are overlooking

Is California looking to tax retirement accounts? Experts push back on claims

A wave of texts and mailers warning that California politicians are targeting retirement savings for taxation has sparked confusion among voters, but experts say the claims mischaracterize a broader fight over competing ballot initiatives. At issue is a proposed measure called the Retirement and Per

How one builder cut cycle time by 30 days with integrated ops

Selling season 2026 – long on uncertainty and short on Spring mojo – is keeping many private homebuilders up at night and on edge all day long. The challenge is no longer just about generating traffic to homebuilder websites and new neighborhood sales centers, converting buyers, or managing incentiv

The strategic rationale behind QXO’s $17 billion TopBuild acquisition 

Brad Jacobs’ vaunted, capital treasure-trove-fueled sprint to geographic and marketshare clout, enough to disrupt the nation’s building products and materials supply infrastructure, took another big leap this weekend, with a $17 billion deal to acquire TopBuild, a giant among homebuilder-favored dis

IRVE: The independent brokerage that grew $2B in five years

While national brands dominate real estate headlines, an independent brokerage based in Pennsylvania’s chocolate capital has quietly posted one of the industry’s strongest five-year growth runs. Iron Valley Real Estate — now rebranding as IVRE — placed No. 10 nationally for five-year volume growth a

How the post-war homebuilders built the modern playbook

If you want to understand the DNA of the modern American homebuilding industry, you don’t start in a boardroom or on Wall Street. You start in the aftermath of World War II. The men (and they were almost entirely men at the time) who came home from that war didn’t just return with discipline and gri

Real estate brokers own the listing data, says Realtracs

Tennessee-based MLS Realtracs has replaced its traditional MLS participation agreement with a new Brokerage Services Agreement that explicitly affirms brokers own their listings and the associated data, according to an April 14, 2026 company blog post by president and CEO Stuart White. In the post,

‘Stability matters more than ever’ as loan officer mobility slows again in 2025

Loan officer mobility is continuing to decline even as the overall pool of active producers rebounds from recent low points. This appears to signal a shift in how originators are weighing risk, compensation and opportunity, according to a recent mortgage market intelligence report from RETR. Loan of

Houston Association of Realtors, Repliers form data access partnership

Toronto-based Repliers has entered into a strategic partnership with HAR.com — the multiple listing service (MLS) platform operated by the Houston Association of Realtors — to provide real-time access to MLS data and expanded analytics tools for subscribers. Under the agreement, Repliers will serve

The GPS for equity: Building the industry’s first true navigation infrastructure

As automation reshapes mortgage operations, the industry’s next challenge is to help borrowers navigate the complex decisions that shape their lives—not just to close the loan faster.   For the better part of a decade, the mortgage industry has been obsessed with a single metric:  speed. We have pou

Home inspection trends reshaping the 2026 housing market

The home inspection industry is undergoing a quiet shift that directly impacts mortgage origination timelines, closing procedures, and lender risk assessment. As the owner of an inspection company, with over 3,000 inspections completed across Texas’s fastest-growing markets, I’m seeing trends that f

Weekly pending home sales show yearly growth as mortgage rates fall

A ton of housing data snapped back last week as it should have from the holiday-impacted week before: active inventory, new listings and weekly pending home sales all grew above trend. This usually happens when we have a major holiday the previous week that slows data, but mortgage rates have also f

Three lessons for mortgage leaders right now

I became a grandma recently, which has been equal parts magical … and also mildly humiliating. Because apparently, everything we did thirty years ago is now wrong. Like, way wrong. I marvel that my daughter survived to age one. Put the baby on their stomach? Wrong. Kiss that baby on the face? Not ye

RealTrends Verified top performers prove there’s no one way to scale

While many of the same real estate firms may grace the top echelons of the RealTrends Verified Rankings year after year, that is where, at least for many of these firms, the similarities between them end. From cloud-based to franchise networks, specializations and network approaches the top performi

Real estate tech shifting from Swiss Army knives to scalpels

For nearly two decades, real estate technology followed a predictable playbook: Build an all-in-one platform that does everything, with the CRM, dialer, transaction management and nurture campaigns all under one roof. But a quiet reversal is underway. A growing number of agents, teams and brokerages

Tri Pointe Homes shareholders approve merger with Sumitomo Forestry

Tri Pointe Homes shareholders overwhelmingly voted to approved the previously announced merger with Japanese firm Sumitomo Forestry during a special meeting of stockholders held on Thursday.  While the deal is not yet finalized, the acquisition is expected to close sometime during the second quarter

HOA liens climb 8.6% nationwide in 2025, with Sun Belt states feeling the most heat

Homeowners associations (HOAs) filed 284,933 liens against U.S. homeowners in 2025 — an 8.6% increase from the 262,446 filings in 2024 and the equivalent of roughly one lien recorded every 90 seconds — according to property records compiled by Benutech. An HOA lien is a legal claim placed on a prope