Real Estate Quotes of the Week for Feb. 19, 2023

There’s never a dull week in real estate, and likewise there are very few dull players. As is the case most weeks, there was no shortage of quotes that caught our attention.

“Adam and Doug don’t come cheap,” Piper Sandler analyst Alexander Goldfarb said.

No, they — Adam as in Spies and Doug as in Harmon — don’t. The powerhouse duo — which has been involved in more than $250 billion worth of deals since 1997 — caused more than a tremor in the commercial real estate world by moving from Cushman & Wakefield to Newmark.

Not everyone, including Spies and Harmon’s new boss, Newmark CEO Barry Gosin, agreed.

“There’s a lot of mythology out there,” Gosin said. “The money up front is not why people move. It just isn’t.”

And ‘tis the season of company’s annual reports, with the spin that typically comes with them.

Zillow, despite losing $72 million last quarter, beat analysts expectations following last year’s volatile housing market, with the company’s mortgage segment’s revenues falling 65 percent year-over-year.

“The unprecedented housing macro volatility continued, this time to the downside — the scenario we feared could happen,” Zillow co-founder and CEO Rich Barton said.

Redfin had a rough year, closing 2022 with layoffs and reporting a $62 million loss last quarter. Following layoffs, the closure of Redfin Now and a loss of market share, the company shifted its business to partner agents instead of in-house agents to lower personnel costs like training.

“Going through this near-death experience of trading at $3 or $4 a share made us examine every cost associated with employing agents and comparing that to the gross profit margin we get from partner agents,” Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman said.

Some companies did better than others.

Airbnb, for example, reported a record fourth quarter and had its first profitable year in company history.

“When we started, we started as an affordable alternative to hotels. I think affordability and value is one of the key reasons people use Airbnb,” CEO Brian Chesky said.

Elsewhere, development of the long-frozen supertall at 125 Greenwich Street in Manhattan is thawing, thanks to a $313 million injection from Northwind Group, an alternative lender known for condo inventory loans.

“It’s a complicated loan — you can’t get it done in one week,” Ran Eliasaf, CEO of Northwind, said of the deal.

In Texas, KKR & CO., lost $12.7 million in an email spoofing scam involving homebuilder Howard J. Nelms, the San Antonio Express reported. Nelms received $5 million in wire transfers from KKR, though he may have been an unwitting middleman.

“Most of them believe they are doing a legitimate job. They don’t know they are doing something illegal,” Dan Morales, acting special agent in charge of the Secret Service in San Antonio, told the outlet. “That’s how the crooks wash their money.