 Okay guys, what is up everybody? Ricky Karuth here. So, recently, Co-Star Group agrees to acquire Homesnap, a residential real estate search portal for $250 million cash. Okay, that deal is expected to close by the end of the year. Now, what in the world does this mean for real estate agents, real estate buyers and sellers and investors? Well, I can tell you this, the more I dig into this deal, the more I realize that this is going to be an incredibly positive situation for all those involved. And one particular thing that I really enjoy seeing is the fact that I believe that this is going to give Zillow a run for its money. Now, I'm about to dive into the details of this deal and as always, I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments. It's still really early here with this acquisition and where this is going to lead the industry but I believe over time we're going to see that this was a monumental moment. Now, before I get into today's video, I want to let you know that Cyber Monday has already begun for real estate agents. I'm going to put a link in the description but you can go ahead and start your constant contact deal. They're giving you 40% off for the next six months to use their software to build your weekly email. My weekly emails went out every Wednesday since 2007. It's literally how I sell 100 properties every single year. RedX is going to be doing their discount Monday only and you're going to be able to save up to $300 depending on what package you choose. I'm actually going to go live from the RedX office real early Monday morning. I'm going to give you the link for RedX first thing Monday morning so you can lock in those savings and Webinate, the company that created all my websites, will build you a custom IDX website that you actually own and they're doing it right now for no setup fee. You walk in, they build your website, custom built website, no setup fee. So I hope you partake in Cyber Monday this year and really get your business set up and all the tools that you need going into 2021. 2021 is going to be an amazing year and that's why December 11th at 4 p.m. central I'm going to do my 2021 goal setting and planning session for real estate agents. Okay I'm going to put a link in the description for that as well. It's going to be webinar style and it's really going to be something else because I'm going to release my brand new 90-day action plan. Okay guys so I'm super excited about everything I just said moving forward 2021 is going to be I think it's going to be that year. I think it's going to be one of those years that that we say wow how did this happen because I think it's going to absolutely explode just my thoughts. Let me know what you think the real estate market is going to do in 2021 as you simultaneously smash the like button for me. Okay so let's dive into today's video so back in 2002 when I got in real estate there was no Zillow, there was no Facebook, there was no social medias, there was barely an MLS. When I first got my license and I joined a company and joined Exit Realty and Gulf Shores the agents there were telling me how spoiled I was because I came into the business before MLS was around. They said before that they literally got a book every month that agents put their listings in and that's what they would use to figure out what was on the market so information on that booklet could be 30 days older or more. So it was very interesting to to look at the market from that perspective. Coming in in 2002 around the same time MLS came around and now towards the end of 2020 as I look back at all the technology that has come into the market since then and everything that we can do digitally now it's absolutely amazing. It's incredible how we can communicate with people so much better so much quicker. We get documents signed electronically. When I got into the business that was something that I probably couldn't even wrap my head around at the moment. When I finally realized and DocuSign and Dotloop and all these different companies popped up where you can actually get documents signed electronically through email that was groundbreaking for me because I was in a situation where I had to fax a listing agreement they signed it faxed it back when they when I faxed it to them it shrunk it when they signed it sent it back it shrunk it a little more sometimes we would do contracts and negotiate back in four three four times and by the time we got the deal done that the actual contract was like this big on a on a regular sheet of paper it shrunk it down to to a size that you you couldn't even read it so literally had to rewrite the contract to the agreed upon terms and that was our process back then so we've come so far in technology and the way that real estate is actually uh conducted and I'm just I'm so glad to have went through all that and be able to sit right here realize how much of an advantage that we have right now this it makes our job so much easier okay however they're still the liability they're still the relationship that has to be put in place the buyer the seller they still have to find trust in a real estate agent and trust them to look after them through the deal and make sure that everything's going smooth and handle the inspectors the lenders the title companies and all the different pieces of the puzzle that make the transaction work so although technology's come a long way and it's where we can operate a lot quicker I still feel like we are absolutely worth every dollar of commission that we get and that's been the thesis of the market so far commissions haven't went down at all since I started real estate I was getting five or six in 2002 today I get five or six so technology has literally put us in a position where we can help more people in less time which means what higher sales production but that's only if you take advantage of it right a lot of agents aren't taking advantage full advantage of the opportunities that's right at their fingertips for example redx finding phone numbers with the click of a mouse and then turn around and auto dial them one after another right with the snap of a finger did not exist when I was coming up I made a hundred thousand cold calls with my finger so technology's come a long way and I'm really happy to have rode this journey up to this point to watch the entire thing unfold and that brings us to the content of today's video costar group I love costar group I've been reading a lot about them lately and I love everything about what they're doing if you don't know costar group is more of a commercial real estate based website they have commercial real estate brokers and buyers and sellers and they've created such a great culture and brand around trying to connect real estate agents commercial real estate agents commercial buyers commercial sellers it's an incredible tool in that sense but what they've done up to this point they've acquired many companies okay I'll go over that a second but the biggest one here lately is home snap and what does home snap do home snap is a residential real estate search portal okay so what does this mean they're moving into residential more and more and more they also purchased apartments.com okay they also purchased 10x which is an auction site that owns auction.com okay residential auctions so they're moving into the residential real estate space and they're taking everything they learned over the last 30 years of costar's existence and they're going to start applying it to the entire real estate market not just commercial sales so the CEO of costar is Andy Florence okay this guy I've really been you know reading a lot about him and learning about him and everything and I love everything this guy is saying okay but he says that the addition of home snap to costar's portfolio adds clients and information covering 90% of the $27 trillion US real estate market that is massive they've literally stepped right into a situation where they own so much data and as you guys know data is the new black everybody is after data you know Zilla wants data even companies really regular real estate companies like Keller Williams and Remax why do you think Keller Williams implemented command why do you think Remax implemented Booge their CRMs they're wanting you to put all your contacts information in there so that they would have access to all the data why do you think Zilla bought Dotloop okay Dotloop is one of the the most widely used of document storage cloud companies for real estate transactions out there why did Zilla buy that so that they own all the data and speaking of more data costar has also been linked to the potential acquisition of core logic okay it's a real estate data an analyst firm that says it has a client base and more than 1.2 million agents across the US and Canada so here's one of things interesting home snap has so far failed to compete with the Zillows and the Red Fins of the world in terms of consumer eyeballs so basically home snaps portal is built as a joint venture with Broker public portal which is a project backed by real estate brokerages and real estate trade associations through their multiple listing services so basically they've been kind of on the back end they haven't really been in front of clients so the acquisition by costar to come in is going to be that extra piece of the puzzle they were looking for with costar's experience they can actually take home snap and take it mainstream to get those consumer eyeballs that's what's going to make this thing very very interesting because the reason why everybody feels like this is going to be you know costar versus Zillow is that costar is going to come in and do it completely opposite of Zillow okay Zillow takes a select few agents makes them pay a lot of money to put them on other agents listings and costar is going to do the exact opposite they're going to do your listing your lead policies so this is going to be an interesting matchup i can't wait to see how this all plays out but in addition residential property agents okay spend an estimated 10 billion every year on software and marketing while influencing another 21 billion in such adjacent markets such as lending insurance or relocation services so this is a huge market in terms of the amount of money going into the market from agents okay this is where Zillow makes its money costar is going to come in there and try to reverse the entire situation so like i said i think this is a monumental moment in the history of the real estate industry and i'm going to follow this story as we go along i'm going to keep a close eye on it and report back to you every time i hear something new about it let me know in the comments what you think about this where you think this is going i would love to hear and let me say really quickly before i go i really appreciate you watching my videos and clicking the like button subscribing doing all those things if there's anything in the world that i can do to give back to you more than a rdm please reach out and let me know i'll link a video below called the 10 reasons why real estate agents fail that i made about a year or so ago it's a really good video if you haven't watched it so i'd appreciate that and we'll see you on the next video let's go