Tag Archives: Real Estate

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[RDFN – Redfin] Business Model Analysis and Growth Constraints

[I am currently writing up a somewhat brief companion piece on Zillow.  It will be posted next week.]   Like healthcare and education, real estate is a massive market plagued by inefficiency, protected by incumbent interests, and resistant to reform.  If you’ve ever bought or sold a home, then you have no doubt been struck by […]
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[CMPR – Cimpress NV] Scale Economies and Hard Realities, Pt. 3

Cimpress is a fine business that has been in search of strategic direction for the last 6-7 years, groping for the right balance between value-added customization and low-cost production.  These two sources of differentiation are often at odds because the scale economies required to claim a cost advantage depend on running lots and lots of […]

[RP – RealPage] Software Bundle, Not a Platform

In 1998 RealPage Communications, an internet hosting service for the commercial and residential real estate industry, merged with Rent Roll, a provider of property management software, giving birth a few years later to the company’s flagship property management SaaS, OneSite.  At a time when property managers were still awkwardly fusing disparate general purpose on-premise systems […]

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[FSV – FirstService; CWD LN – Countrywide plc] Scale Economies and Hard Realities: Part 1

Today’s post is part of a broader discussion about scale advantages: when they apply and to what degree.  I’m addressing this topic in the context of rolled-up entities because, in my experience, it is here that scale advantages seem far too liberally promoted, even if they do sometimes apply with awesome effect.  This write-up was […]

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