All Forum Posts by: Jonathan Greene

This one is not a you issue for the tech, Jay, the search function and tagging is awful. Almost unusable and that is important when we tell people to look up the LLC question. That one can be found though for sure.

When I was moderating, it was frankly laughable the excuses the very few people made when their posts were obviously self-promotion. About ninety percent are thankful and just didn't know the rules.

Yeah that is a huge pet peeve, but also could be AI posters who don't care or my even least favorite, didn't get the initial feedback they wanted so they didn't look again.

Yes, the overall functionality of the site makes it very hard. It hasn't progressed at all. When you are tagging a person, if you mess up a letter, you have to start all over. And the search is absolutely abysmal, you can't find anything well. I agree with all of that.

Yes, very fair analysis. I don't think there are greener pastures for this type of thing, but may be generally time to take a break for anyone who finds no value in the forums.

That is helpful, but do you find, like I do, that only maybe half of those people actually appreciate that you went an extra level to help them and answer?

Fair point. But ten years ago, we weren't dealing with as much blatant AI content as we are now. The ease of writing something has become easier so I feel like people care less about what they write, but it could be cyclical like you say.

Great point about the low-hanging fruit being harder to reach. I just feel like many people have no will to try to ask a really good question anymore.

I find them almost unreadable now. Finding a good post to respond to takes me close to ten minutes. There is so much AI, reverse trolling, and one-line posts that the moderators can't keep up. And I know because I was a moderator for a couple of months, but I quit.

Being a moderator on the site is thankless. There are no benefits, no pay. Whenever you remove a post, you have a 10-20 percent chance that the poster will email you to complain. It's not fun, but it helps the site a lot. However, there aren't enough moderators to do the job against technology and spammers now. This is part of why the forums are pretty vapid, significantly more so than they used to be. When you give the benefit of the doubt to garbage posts, it creates a pile of trash, making it harder to find the collectibles.

The company's target audience is new investors. Old investors like me only invest in the subscription for pro; we don't buy courses or books (actually, I own probably 20 of their books) regularly. So, the focus on new investors creates allowable concessions in favor of new people, but that doesn't improve the forums. "We all had to start somewhere" is true, but the forums used to be more fun when people weren't as fragile as they are now. When you tell someone their strategy isn't brilliant, they melt into an offended state and fry themselves in their forum.

Are the forums here getting worse, or is it just me? Maybe I am just getting too old to wade through AI posts to try to help someone. I can't even look at the Facebook group because it is the forums x 10. I still want to help, but the time to find something interesting is getting too long for me.

Thoughts?

I worked with Zillow for years. My team was on Zillow Flex. They are a platform that has no identity and doesn't really know what they are doing or who they are serving. They make their money off of real estate agents, but real estate agents are the worst people to make money off because they are highly unreliable and in and out of the business when the market changes.

Their target should be the consumer with higher levels that they can subscribe too for data, since Zillow is linked to the MLS now which makes their data somewhere more reliable. But consumers all are on the site for free where real estate agents are constantly hawked to buy leads or participate in what is now a 35-40% referral business for unvetted leads who think they are contacting the listing agent.

Their business model has always been flawed. I gave them consistent feedback for years and still believe they could have made $10m or more off of my ideas. Instead, they bought homes and lost money, then acquired Open Door and lost money. There is no one with experience in actual real estate high up in the company, which is the problem with most tech companies masquerading as real estate companies (including brokerages).

Let me know if you want to know even more. :)

This is why so many new investors are saying they are going to BRRRR properties, not knowing that, in many markets, it doesn't work right now with high prices, low inventory, and higher rates. And of course, they can't find a deal that pencils.

Nothing is absolute, there are deals everywhere still if you keep digging.