
Fine dining chef Sierra Erickson puts a new spin on her career with Bosse Pickledom
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Our space is two floors. We have 21 pickleball courts — 10 downstairs, 11 upstairs — but there's only one kitchen on the ground floor. We have an enoteca, an Italian restaurant on the bottom floor, where we do from-scratch pasta and pizza. We make our own dough. Connected to that, we have our French café. We bake our croissants fresh every morning. From there, you can get a smoothie, salads, grain bowls, and sandwiches. Upstairs, we have our sports lounge. All the food does come out of one kitchen, which can be tricky coordinating sometimes, but we get it done.
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How did you come to work here?
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I was the chef de cuisine at Deuxave, a fine-dining French restaurant in Boston, working under chef Chris Coombs.
He had mentioned that he was building this. I wasn't really looking to move jobs at the time. I loved Deuxave. I worked there for three years and worked my way up to becoming chef de cuisine. But I ended up seeing a job posting online where they were looking for an executive chef here. I came in, I toured the space, and it seemed like a good change of pace for me. Since I'd worked at Deuxave for three years, I felt like I had achieved most of what I could learn there. I felt good about leaving at that point.
Here, I'm managing three times the amount of people I've ever managed. The space is huge. There are a lot of moving parts. It's a bigger operation, and I was ready to expand myself in that way.
What sparked your love of cooking?
I've always been artistic. I love to draw. I love to paint. When I was little, I got super into cake-decorating, and I was really intrigued by the show 'Cake Boss.' I just loved that they were creating food that people couldn't even believe was edible. The expression on their faces and how excited or happy it made them made me think: 'I want to be able to do that someday.'
When I turned 16, I started working at a bakery a town over from where I grew up in New Hampshire, where I learned production baking. I ended up realizing it was not for me. I thought it was pretty boring, to be honest. But I would do cakes for friends' birthdays and parents' anniversaries, and I thought that was pretty cool: At 16, I was being paid to make cakes for people!
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I knew I wanted to go to culinary school, because I thought I wanted to be a pastry chef. I thought I wanted to be a cake decorator. That was my dream job.
What happened?
Going through culinary school at Southern New Hampshire University, especially my freshman year, they make you take baking and savory labs. I realized the cooking labs weren't too hard.
During my internship in the summer following freshman year, I worked for a higher-end catering company in New Hampshire called The White Apron. I didn't do any baking there whatsoever, and I wanted it to be that way so I could throw myself into something that I didn't know too much about. I did all the savory cooking. That's where I learned how to make an aioli from scratch, how to make a vinaigrette from scratch. Being trusted to make a good one was pretty cool. I could make any vinaigrette, any flavor I wanted.
I studied abroad in Florence, Italy, my junior year, and I worked in a student restaurant there. I could have chosen the bakery or the restaurant, but I was falling in love with cooking. I chose the restaurant to further challenge myself. I worked with kids from Turkey, France, Korea, and Vietnam, which was really awesome. I learned how to make pasta from scratch, which is still one of my favorite things to do to this day. I was drawn to savory cooking because of the artistic plating.
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What's your take on the Greater Boston food scene? What's good? Where is there still room for growth?
It's definitely harder to find quality workers out here and people who want to do the food that we're doing. A lot of the line cooks we've hired hadn't cooked in a from-scratch kitchen, and I love that we're giving them the opportunity to learn.
Some of the flavor combinations or spiciness levels aren't really the same out here that you'd be able to get away with in Boston. People may not be as adventurous. We've slowly tested a few things here and there.
With the
I feel that, café-wise, a lot of bigger names dominate the market now, like Tatte. It's harder for people to start out and open something of a smaller caliber, just because all these bigger names have taken the reins, which I've noticed even in the suburbs, too. It would be nice to hear of new people coming to the scene, being able to open a place. Honestly, it's very expensive to do that, especially in Boston. It's a goal of mine someday.
What's your dream job?
There's a time and place for fine dining. I would love to be part of something with a more casual atmosphere but really nice food, almost the same caliber as Deuxave: really pretty, beautiful, yummy food in a more casual setting.
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Where do you eat when you're not working?
I live in Wakefield. I lived in Boston for five years but recently moved out into the suburbs. Since I've primarily worked with French or Italian food most of my career, honestly, I crave anything but that when I'm not working. I really love sushi. I really love ramen and anything umami.
There's a great American Chinese place right around the corner from my apartment called Wei's Cuisine. There's also a place right across the street called Tonno. If my boyfriend and I ever want a martini or to have some apps or a quick dinner, we love them. We always go there.
There's also a really great steakhouse in the suburbs called
Is there any food that you can't stand?
I'm not really a picky eater, honestly. But these days, there are a lot of places that go viral for kind of overdoing it with certain sandwiches that are 20 layers deep of whatever it is. I don't understand how someone can eat that — a grilled cheese dipped in queso, stuff like that. It's really great content for TikTok or Instagram, but imagine actually eating that?
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Seeing greasy stuff like that really rubs me the wrong way, especially being a chef and knowing that it's just a gimme. There's probably not a lot of thought that went into it.
Have to ask: Do you play pickleball?
I have played once since I started. It was pretty fun. Our courts are filled all day long. It's a great workout, especially, and it's pretty low-contact, so it's great for everyone of all ages. I'd definitely play again. But most days I'm not working, especially in the summer, I go to the beach.
Are there pickles on your menu?
We have fried pickles! We also use krinkle-cut dill pickles on our burger.
Last but not least: favorite snack?
That's a tough one. I'm a big lover of sweet and salty together. Honestly? Chocolate-covered potato chips nail it every time. I like to make my own.
Interview has been edited.
Kara Baskin can be reached at

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USA Today
39 minutes ago
- USA Today
What if AMC Motors had survived? How it could've changed the auto industry
American Motors Corporation was an absolute mess by the mid-1980s, and its financial problems in the U.S. market were compounded by infighting at its European corporate parent, Renault, where executives went back and forth about how much money they were willing to pour into their trans-Atlantic subsidiary. The assassination of Renault's chairman in 1986 by French terrorists caused AMC to lose its most powerful supporter, and a hasty sale to Chrysler ultimately condemned it to the dustbin of automotive history. Chrysler hoovered up the tastiest bits of the American Motors portfolio — namely, Jeep — and slowly phased out the rest of the AMC's offerings over the course of the next decade. In retrospect, however, AMC was holding not one, not two, but three aces up its sleeve that could have seen it weather the financial storm throughout the '80s. It's entirely possible that had a few key moments in the company's timeline gone a different way, it would have been American Motors and not Chrysler enjoying the fruits of Jeep's mainstream renaissance in the early 1990s — a rebirth that AMC in fact already had in development when it was scooped up by the suits in Auburn Hills. Our favorite iconic vehicle eras: The most significant cars of the 2000s How different would the car industry have looked at the turn of the millennium if AMC had never changed hands? It turns out that this ripple in the chronological pond had the potential to upset big chunks of established history, not just in America, but in nearly every corner of the established automotive hegemony. Here's our alternative timeline in which AMC not only survives but thrives — and what the resulting fallout would have likely meant for one of Detroit's longtime stalwarts. After intense lobbying by American Motors, the U.S. government carves out an exception to a law forbidding foreign ownership of defense contractors, contingent on Renault spinning off AM General (the builder of the Humvee owned at the time by AMC) as an independently managed concern under the AMC umbrella. The continued, steady flow of government contracts acts as a lifeline for American Motors, and it cancels plans to take out a significant loan from its corporate parent to fund operations. The Renault Espace arrives in AMC showrooms, where it is rebadged as the 'Space Van,' an Americanized take on the literal translation of the French vehicle's European identity. Surprisingly, the funky badge helps give the people-mover some personality, which, combined with its genuine practicality and roomier interior versus rivals from Ford (the Aerostar) and Chevrolet (the Astro), helps put it alongside the Dodge Caravan and Plymouth Voyager as a popular and affordable family ride. In case you missed it: Jeep dealer offers 99-cent lease on Wagoneer EV Following the introduction of the redesigned Jeep Cherokee the year before, this gives AMC a presence in two of the highest-growth segments in the American auto industry, and for the first time in years the company is cash-flow positive. This convinces American Motors to accelerate investment in a larger sport utility vehicle that would complement the Cherokee, called the Grand Cherokee, the design of which is already well underway. Renault chairman Georges Besse's chauffeur is surprised to see two armed women in front of the home of his boss while driving back from the office on a cold November evening. He immediately hits the gas, slamming the rear door shut before Besse can exit the vehicle, and the pair escapes with just a few bullet holes in the rear quarter panel. After surviving the assassination attempt, Besse is given carte blanche at Renault to move forward with his plans for focusing on Jeep as the automaker's piggybank to fund not only AMC, but to also further the expansion of the French brand onto American shores. Chrysler, on a brash spending spree that includes buying a controlling stake in Lamborghini and an expansion of its partnership with Mitsubishi to form Diamond Star Motors, sees exactly the same potential in Jeep as Georges Besse. An offer is made to Renault not just for the off-road brand but for all of AMC, with Chrysler trying to cloak its true intentions about what it considers the real prize of the transaction. Besse won't be bought, however, and Chrysler returns hat-in-hand to Auburn Hills. Ambitious planning begins for the upcoming decade in the American market. With Jeep as its crown jewel, both Eagle and AMC are slated for repositioning beneath Renault. The French badge is no longer interested in its role as an entry-level brand hawking low-spec Le Cars and lays the groundwork for leveraging existing dealerships to form a stronger toehold for the revitalized company. The Jeep Grand Cherokee breaks cover as a 'concept' at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. The response from both the media and show attendees is overwhelmingly positive, leading to a brief spike in compact Cherokee sales from customers too impatient for what they assume will be a lengthy wait for the production version. No one realizes that Besse's pressure to keep pumping cash into Jeep has dramatically accelerated the Grand Cherokee's timeline. The Grand Cherokee makes its debut in showrooms to universal acclaim. On top of offering a choice of either AMC's old faithful inline six-cylinder engine or a newly developed, 5.9-liter fuel-injected V-8, it also provides a turbodiesel option borrowed from the Renault parts bin. The latter choice positions the Jeep in its higher trim levels as something more than an off-roader, pushing it onto the radar of Europhiles who have become used to parking Range Rovers in their driveways. This opens a second front of European sales for Jeep in the luxury sphere. The Ford Explorer joins the midsize SUV scene, splitting the difference between the Grand Cherokee's off-road chops and the practical character prized by family buyers now tempted to abandon their minivans. SUV sales are soaring, leaving General Motors and Chrysler playing catch-up. Chevrolet and GMC are at least able to soak up some sales thanks to the four-door compact Blazer/Jimmy and full-size four-door Suburbans sitting on full-size truck platforms, but the two-door Dodge Ramcharger remains in a distant fourth place as it plays out the string on a dated pickup chassis. Buoyed by strong Jeep sales, Renault launches the initial phase of its ambitious American strategy. First, it spins off AMC as a value-focused brand selling cars on a 'no-haggle' model: What you see advertised is what you pay at the dealership. Along with a redesigned Espace, an entirely new lineup of hatchbacks, small wagons, sedans and budget coupes are gradually deployed over the course of the next few years, some sharing components with Renault's European offerings while others benefit from AMC's next-generation four-cylinder engine program. This puts AMC in direct competition with GM's Saturn brand, which arrived on the scene in mid-1990. Next, a revitalized Eagle steps out of the AMC shadow and becomes its own brand. The focus remains on what are now being called 'crossovers,' automobiles that sit between a wagon and a sport utility vehicle. Eagle also benefits from Renault's technical prowess in the form of unibody models that feature sophisticated all-wheel-drive systems in place of their earlier, low-range four-wheel drive setups. The new Eagles are an immediate hit in regions like Colorado and New England. Chrysler, facing considerable financial strain as sales of the Grand Caravan and Voyager slow in the face of the SUV onslaught, are forced to sell Lamborghini to MegaTech, an Indonesian company owned by Tommy Suharto, the son of that country's president-for-life. The automaker takes a loss on the deal, but it helps stem some of the financial bleeding that's beginning to concern both executives and Wall Street alike. Dodge introduces a new Ram pickup that instantly makes it a player in the full-size segment after years of disappointing sales. Unfortunately, that same success doesn't translate to its revised version of the SUV, which updates the two-door Ramcharger with the new pickup's underpinnings. As the market continues to move toward family-friendly four-door haulers, many of them taking their cues from Eagle's crossovers, the Ramcharger is out of step with what customers are actually looking for in a sport utility. Renault implements the next stage of its U.S. transformation by introducing the second generation of what had originally been planned as the Eagle Premier sedan. Originally kept exclusive to the European market, where it was sold as the Medallion, the new Renault Premier pushes the automaker into a higher class than it had previously enjoyed among American buyers, leading some to compare the car to offerings from Oldsmobile and even Audi. After a fraught development process, the Dodge Viper concept car makes a late debut at the Detroit auto show. Although it was originally hoped that Lamborghini's engineers could be more involved in the design of the vehicle's drivetrain, the early sale forced Dodge to move on from its planned V-10 and instead supercharge the company's long-standing 5.9-liter V-8. Heart-stopping styling doesn't make up for the lack of an exotic engine, making it harder for the public to stomach the no windows/no roof inconveniences of its cabin. Production plans for the Viper are quietly scuttled. The Viper team is diverted to focus on the Dodge Durango, a four-door, Grand Cherokee–sized SUV that the company hopes will turn its fortunes around. Subaru, in the face of strong sales from Eagle eating into its core customer base, makes a product cancellation of its own. The Outback, a tall-riding version of its Legacy wagon, is deemed too derivative of the Eagle lineup to make a dent in the market, and its development is halted. Facing dwindling revenues, and unable to finance new product development, Subaru's leadership initiates back-channel talks with Toyota about a possible merger. Renault, emboldened by the money pouring into its coffers from the success of AMC, Jeep and Eagle, makes the surprise move of purchasing Volvo, scooping Ford who had planned on making overtures for the Swedish brand to join its nascent Premier Automotive Group. After decades of working together on various shared projects, Renault hopes to leverage Volvo's dealer network and customer base to continue its colonization of the near-luxury space in the United States. Talks also begin with Nissan about a potential alliance. Two new premium models emerge on American roads bearing the Renault badge: the Megane sport hatch and the Laguna hatchback sedan, with the latter praised for its near-crossover utility and excellent handling. Concerned by Renault's burgeoning acquisition portfolio, Toyota signs a deal to bring Subaru in-house. At the same time, executives announce a new subbrand called Scion that's intended to take on both AMC and Saturn, which have split much of the entry-level market between them in the United States. Chrysler, looking for a savior of its own, begins talks with Daimler about a potential 'merger of equals.' The German automaker's boardroom doesn't see much of value in Chrysler's mishmash of cheap cars, fading minivans and almost-luxury sedans, and while the Dodge Ram is appealing, it's too far outside the Daimler playbook to integrate properly into its American operations. Discussions never advance past the initial stages. Emboldened by its newfound partnership with Nissan (which involved a stock share and co-investment in each other's companies), Renault has the cash to add the missing piece to its U.S. portfolio: Dodge, which it plucks from a flailing Chrysler as part of a general takeover bid. While the Ram pickup fills an important void, the Ramcharger is quietly put out of its misery, along with any plans to bring the stillborn Durango to market. The Chrysler brand is relegated to special trim levels on several Renault models, specifically those sold to livery companies for use as limousines. The Walter P. Chrysler package becomes a popular choice in the black car business over the course of the next decade. Photos by Getty Images, MotorTrend Archive, Ryan Lugo
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
The nightmare scenario for America's real estate market
A few years ago, Brian Boero and his wife decided to buy a vacation home in Tuscany. They envisioned owning an apartment in a medieval Italian city, the ideal splurge for a couple of empty nesters after the height of the pandemic. It was also "kind of a 'YOLO' thing," says Boero, the CEO of 1000Watt, a real estate consulting firm. Once he started hunting for a place, though, his European dream turned into a total nightmare. Shop Top Mortgage Rates Your Path to Homeownership A quicker path to financial freedom Personalized rates in minutes It didn't take long for Boero to realize he'd been spoiled by the American market. That may sound strange given the country's housing woes, but even Americans who've never bought a house have probably enjoyed the quirks that make our setup the envy of the rest of the world. When you want to get a sense of all the homes for sale in your area, you can easily cruise over to Zillow or the website of one of its competitors. The listings on these sites are pulled from industry databases that police their accuracy to ensure you're not wasting time on old or scammy postings. If you like a place, it's pretty easy for your agent to schedule a tour, scoop the keys out of a lockbox, and show you around. The rest of the buying process may come with tears and headaches, but the matter of actually finding homes is fairly seamless. Not so in Europe. The Zillow equivalents there offer only partial views of the market, turning up inaccurate listings or homes that have already traded hands. In particularly maddening cases, the same house may be listed separately by several agents, each of whom is asking for a different price. Brokers are also known to gatekeep their best listings, hiding them from the view of the average buyer. Even aggregate market data is hard to come by since there's no central clearing house for listings — it can be difficult to know whether you're getting a really good deal or a really bad one. In Italy, Boero says, he ended up having to carry out much of his search on foot, hoofing around town to peek at home listings posted in the windows of various brokerages. His real estate agent spent a lot of time on the phone, calling around to see what was available. For Boero, the whole thing felt like "feeling around in the dark." "It was shadowy, confusing," Boero tells me. "We really didn't feel like we were in control of the process." Boero is among those warning that the US market could be headed down a similar path. Some of the country's biggest real estate companies are engaged in a fierce war over the rise of "hidden listings" — homes advertised in some places but purposely kept off other sites. Zillow has gone so far as to ban listings that it says weren't shared with everyone, including Zillow, in a timely manner. Compass, the nation's largest real estate brokerage by sales volume, has responded by suing Zillow in federal court. The feud could result in a fracturing of the housing market, with home listings scattered across the internet or hidden away in so-called "private listing networks." Such a future would have real consequences for American homebuyers, who are used to getting a near-complete view of the market simply by navigating to one of the many home search websites available. There's also a bitter irony at the heart of this fight. Groups of real estate brokers in countries around the world are trying to replicate the US model at the same time that big firms on this side of the pond are squabbling over that very setup. "In France, they're laughing at the situation at this moment, honestly," Ali Attar, a real estate tech executive in Paris, tells me. The system in the US, he says, is more fragile than people realize. "They are taking it for granted in the US," Attar says. "And as soon as they destroy it, bringing it back will be extremely difficult." It took decades for the US to reach this kind of housing market transparency. The crown jewels of our modern real estate model — the things that make everything else possible — are the multiple-listing services, local databases where agents share detailed information on homes for sale. The MLSes then shuttle that info to search portals like Zillow, Redfin, or as well as the websites of thousands of local and national real estate brokerages. The average buyer doesn't get direct access to the MLSes, but with the help of the search portals, they don't really need it. Any home shopper can peruse the market, free of charge, from the comfort of their couch. The MLS model is considered by many to be the gold standard. Brokers in other countries have attempted to form similar databases, but the structure in North America remains unique. The problem isn't a lack of technological know-how — building the machinery isn't hard. The tougher part is getting brokers to agree to this kind of cooperation and enforcing the rules to make sure people don't take advantage of the system. In Europe, sellers are often represented by multiple agents who jockey to be the first to procure a buyer. There's a clear incentive to gatekeep a listing — share it around too much, and another agent might swoop in and broker a deal before you know what hit you. The popular, Zillow-like search portals in places like Spain or France are less unbiased repositories of information and more like advertising platforms. Agents ostensibly pay to display listings, but they're also marketing their own services. If a buyer inquires about a listing that's already sold, no matter — the agent can direct them to the other listings held behind closed doors. This is why listings may remain on these sites long after they've gone off the market. When it comes to drawing in more clients, there's no better lure. The ideal real estate marketplace is full of valuable, visible, and valid listings — what Attar refers to as the "three Vs." Buyers want these listings, they can find them, and the information is correct. House hunters in the US are accustomed to websites with postings that check off all three boxes. But in Europe, Attar says, home listings are typically missing at least one. "If it is valuable and it is valid, it's not visible," Attar tells me. "It's going to be hidden somewhere." Hollin Stafford, a real estate agent with eXp Realty in Portugal, can attest to these frustrations. She spent more than a decade working in the business in the States before moving to a town outside Lisbon in 2016. There she encountered a setup that, in many ways, still feels like "the Wild West," she tells me. Though Stafford has now spent years helping buyers and sellers navigate the Portuguese market through her company, Blue Horizon Properties, she hasn't forgotten the parts of the US system that she once took for granted. "You get so used to having the centralized system where you can see all of the details you need," Stafford says. "You can see what things actually sold for, and do a proper market evaluation, and all these things that you just think are par for the course." In September, real estate leaders from around the world are set to gather in Toronto for the third-annual International MLS Forum, a conference where attendees discuss plans to create the kinds of systems that buyers and sellers in the US already enjoy. Canada is the only other country with anything approaching a similar setup, says Sam DeBord, the CEO of the Real Estate Standards Organization, a nonprofit group focused on developing the technological rules and processes that undergird the MLS databases. Other places, like Egypt and France, have taken steps toward creating comparable databases. But in most cases, those with power — the big brokerages or portals that run things — have little incentive to make a change. "It's this concept of a tragedy of the commons," DeBord tells me. "If every individual goes out and takes as much as they can, all of a sudden the marketplace is ruined." There are some clear signs that the US real estate market could fall into something like the cutthroat, user-unfriendly European model. For one thing, the MLSes are basically a social construct. The National Association of Realtors — one of the most powerful industry groups in the country — effectively sets the rules for participating in these databases, and the local MLSes may levy fines against agents who run afoul of those policies. But there's no law that says it has to work this way, and recent troubles at the NAR have dented the group's influence over other power players. Actual enforcement among local MLSes is also known to be spotty. Some in the industry fear that it could all crumble if all this infighting turns into an actual exodus. Last year, Compass, which has more than 37,000 agents around the country, staked its future on a plan to draw more agents and clients by building up a stockpile of "exclusive inventory": homes that couldn't be found anywhere else. The company began heavily pushing a "three-phased marketing strategy" that encouraged sellers to test their home listings exclusively on the Compass website — first in the company's internal database and then on its public-facing landing page — before sharing them with the MLS and the major search portals. The crux of their pitch was that the MLS and sites like Zillow display information that doesn't help a seller, tracking stuff like price cuts and how long the house has been on the market. The brokerage's marketing plan, on the other hand, lets sellers fine-tune their approach and gather valuable feedback from other agents before making a broader debut. Plenty of industry figures cried foul over this plan — the whole system is predicated on the idea that agents share their listings widely and freely. But the brokerage's play also seemed to be working. Buyers want to get a first glimpse at homes however they can, and sellers may not mind testing the market in a limited capacity if they think it'll net them more in the long run. In February of this year, Compass said that more than half of its sellers were choosing to "premarket" their homes using the three-phased plan. About 94% of Compass's listings last year, including those that went through this kind of premarketing, eventually made it to the MLS, the company says, though it's not clear how long those houses spent in the databases. Even if most of these houses ended up on Zillow and the like, Compass clients still had early access to thousands of listings that couldn't be found on the big search portals. The concern now is that other big brokerages could decide to follow suit, keeping homes on their own websites before sharing them elsewhere. In this state of play, a buyer could still visit a site like Zillow to look at homes for sale, but the portal wouldn't be able to show you all, or maybe even most, of the available listings at any given moment. Instead, you'd have to jump from site to site, scouring the web for homes. The choice of an agent would carry additional weight — you'd have to consider just how much of the market they could unlock via their access to private, internal databases. The closest analogy to this hypothetical may be the fragmented world of video streaming, in which companies like Netflix, Hulu, and HBO Max are racing to build walled gardens of exclusive content. Sure, you can try to get access to all the shows and movies out there, but doing so requires a lot of time and money. And, frankly, it's a huge pain. Mike DelPrete, a real estate tech strategist and scholar-in-residence at the University of Colorado Boulder, has been warning about this threat to the search portals for years. "When it comes to browsing for real estate, consumers want access to all of the available inventory," DelPrete wrote in a blog post four years ago. "If a certain portion of listings are held off-market, available exclusively on another platform, consumer eyeballs will naturally follow." For now, a lot of eyeballs are still on Zillow, which draws more than 220 million unique visitors each month. But that's of little comfort to those who warn that Compass could trigger a domino effect among other large brokerages. The 10 largest brands in real estate accounted for more than half of US home sales volume last year, data from T3 Sixty, a consulting firm for residential real estate brokerages, shows. Even some leaders who have come out against Compass' strategy have warned that they, too, could flex their sizable market share to execute a similar game plan. MLSes need "someone to enforce the rules," DeBord tells me. In this case, that enforcer may turn out to be Zillow. The home search giant has tried to put the kibosh on all of this by banning listings that are not shared with Zillow — and the rest of the MLS — within one business day of being marketed publicly. That means as soon as a "for-sale" sign shows up in the front yard or an agent posts about a house on their website, the clock is ticking for them to send it to the databases that share listings with pretty much every other site in the industry. Those who don't comply will be left to explain to their clients why their house won't appear on the most popular home-search portal in the country. Compass has sued Zillow in federal court, accusing the company of using its monopoly power to quash a competing business model that, Compass claims, gives sellers more control over where and how their homes are marketed. In a formal response last month, Zillow disputed the monopoly characterization and argued that it shouldn't be forced to help Compass freeride on the system by accepting its stale listings only after they haven't sold on the Compass site. The brokerage's three-phased marketing strategy, Zillow's lawyers wrote, "harms consumers, who face balkanized and less liquid markets for homes, and Zillow, whose ability to attract and serve consumers depends on comprehensive, up-to-date listings." It's important to remember that anyone weighing in on this battle has a financial stake in their desired outcome. Compass wants to grow its agent base and market share. Zillow needs fresh home listings to fuel its business, which relies on selling leads to agents who pay to advertise on its platform. American companies aren't the only ones who care about this, either — brokers around the world are watching to see how this shakes out. When I talked to DelPrete back in June, he had just returned from a weekslong work trip to Europe. The fight over inventory back in the States, he says, came up "a surprising amount of times." "I think it's a case of the grass is always greener, right?" DelPrete says. "The US wants what the rest of the world has, and the rest of the world wants what the US has." There's a case to be made that all this hand-wringing will turn out to be hyperbole. The real estate industry in the US is notoriously slow to change, and consumers are used to the current setup. Zillow draws so many visitors that it's hard to imagine real estate agents shunning the platform en masse — it's simply too powerful a marketing machine. The MLS model, at least as it exists in the States, is far from perfect. More than 500 local databases form a complex web of overlapping fiefdoms that agents have to subscribe to individually. The recent class-action lawsuits against the National Association of Realtors and major brokerages cast the MLSes not as models of transparency, but as shadowy databases that helped prop up agent commissions by facilitating a sneaky practice known as "steering." There are other models that could work, too: In Australia, for instance, there's a dominant search portal where most people go to find homes, and many places sell via an auction that offers more transparency than the US system of making blind offers. And while the search portals here offer pretty comprehensive views of the market, they've never had all of the listings. There have always been so-called "pocket listings" that float around beyond the reach of the MLSes, available only to in-the-know agents who can offer their clients a leg up on the competition. But hardly anyone in the industry disagrees with the basic premise that buyers like being able to find homes easily and in one place. People may gripe about Zillow's power in the industry or the questionable accuracy of its ubiquitous Zestimate, but the ability to scroll through all the listings on the site — or those on any of the other search portals — is unique to North America. Few probably appreciate this better than Boero, the real estate exec who set out to buy the Italian getaway of his dreams. He did eventually find a place that checked off his boxes: "We're happy with it," he says. But he made that purchase with far less confidence than he had in any real estate transaction in his life. And even today, he has no idea whether it's worth more or less than it was when he bought it three years ago. The whole experience, he tells me, gave him a new appreciation for the American way of doing things. "Within the industry, we've made these comparisons ad nauseam," Boero tells me. "'Hey guys, let's not destroy this very special thing we have. Because just look at the rest of the world and how messed up it is.'" James Rodriguez is a senior reporter on Business Insider's Discourse team. Read the original article on Business Insider
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Interactive Brokers Jumps 41.8% in 3 Months: How to Play the Stock?
Interactive Brokers Group, Inc.'s IBKR shares have rallied 41.8% in the past three months, outperforming the industry's 20.3% growth and the S&P 500 Index's 13.1% rise. Moreover, IBKR's price performance has been better than that of its peers, Charles Schwab SCHW and Tradeweb Markets Inc. TW. The Schwab stock has gained 14.8%, whereas shares of Tradeweb Markets have declined 2.2% in the same time frame. Price Performance Image Source: Zacks Investment Research Does the Interactive Brokers stock have more upside left despite showing recent strength in share price? Let us try to find out. What's Aiding IBKR's Performance? Technological Excellence: Interactive Brokers' technological superiority remains one of its strongest aspects. The company processes trades in stocks, digital assets, futures, options and forex on more than 150 exchanges across several countries and compensation expense relative to net revenues (10.9% in the first half of 2025) remain below its industry peers due to its superior technology. Further, the company has been emphasizing developing proprietary software to automate broker-dealer functions, leading to a steady rise in revenues. Over the last five years (2019-2024), total net revenues witnessed a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21.8%, with the momentum continuing in the first half of 2025. Revenue Growth Image Source: Zacks Investment Research Given the company's solid Daily Average Revenue Trade (DART) numbers, along with a robust trading backdrop, its net revenues are expected to improve in the quarters Expansion Through Product Diversification: Interactive Brokers has been undertaking several measures to enhance its global presence. In May 2025, it extended the trading hours for Forecast Contracts to nearly 24 hours a day. In April, it launched the prediction markets hub in Canada to capitalize on the rising demand for event November 2024, IBKR introduced Plan d'Epargne en Actions accounts to boost its offerings for its French clients. Also, the launch of IBKR GlobalTrader has enabled investors worldwide to trade stocks through mobile was one of the first brokers to introduce Overnight Trading on U.S. stocks and ETFs nearly 24 hours a day, five days a week. IBKR Lite has enabled investors to trade commission-free. Moreover, the launch of Impact Dashboard, an innovative sustainable investing tool, has made the company the first major brokerage firm to allow investors to easily align their portfolio with their values. IBKR also launched cryptocurrency trading via Paxos Trust Company, charging commissions that are lower than those of other crypto introduction of IBKR Desktop, the next-generation desktop trading application for Windows and Mac, marks a new chapter for Liquidity Position: Interactive Brokers has been consistent with its dividend payments for a long time. In April 2024, the company hiked its quarterly dividend 150% to 25 cents per share, followed by a 28% hike in April 2025. Additionally, it announced a four-for-one forward split of its common stock to make shares more accessible to of June 30, 2025, IBKR had cash and cash equivalents (including cash segregated for regulatory purposes) of $49.7 billion. Moreover, the company uses insignificant debt to finance its operations. Thus, given a solid liquidity position, IBKR's capital distribution actions look sustainable. What's Hurting IBKR's Growth Elevated Expense Base: Interactive Brokers has been witnessing a steady increase in non-interest expenses over the past few years. Expenses witnessed a CAGR of 13.8% over the five years ended 2024, with the uptrend persisting in the first six months of 2025. Expense Trend Image Source: Zacks Investment Research The increase has been mainly due to higher execution, clearing and distribution fees. As the company continues to invest in franchises, launch new products and services, and upgrade technology, overall costs are likely to remain Reliance on International Revenues: IBKR is a geographically diversified company with a presence across the globe. The company generates a large portion of its revenues (almost 37% of total net revenues) from overseas risks stemming from the regulatory and political environment, foreign exchange fluctuations and the performance of local economies may hurt its financials. Final Thoughts on IBKR Stock Interactive Brokers remains well-positioned for growth in the current volatile operating environment. While the company's profitability is expected to be hampered because of elevated expenses, its strong technological capabilities and diversified product offerings enhance its global reach, thus supporting long-term rapidly evolving trends will benefit the company's revenues and expand its market the past 30 days, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for the company's 2025 and 2026 earnings has moved upward. The estimates reflect year-over-year growth rates of 9.7% and 6.7% for 2025 and 2026, respectively. Earnings Estimates Image Source: Zacks Investment Research The upward earnings estimate revisions reflect that analysts are optimistic regarding IBKR's earnings growth potential. Thus, it seems to be a wise idea to invest in the stock present, IBKR sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank stocks here. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report The Charles Schwab Corporation (SCHW) : Free Stock Analysis Report Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. (IBKR) : Free Stock Analysis Report Tradeweb Markets Inc. (TW) : Free Stock Analysis Report This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research ( Zacks Investment Research Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data