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Yahoo
3 hours 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
Newsweek
12 hours ago
- Newsweek
US Woman Responds as Video Labeling Europe 'Not First World' Sparks Debate
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. A travel content creator from Florida has gone viral responding to a post from another TikToker arguing that parts of Italy should not be considered "first world." Bailey, who posts under the handle @bulletproofbailey, shared the original video after spending time in Umbria and Sardinia—regions in central and southern Italy—arguing that the lack of air conditioning, dishwashers, and bathtubs made the country feel "third world." She has since told Newsweek that the video was intended as satire, but many viewers appeared to take it at face value. One such viewer was Nina Ragusa, 40, known as @whereintheworldisnina on TikTok, who stitched the video to challenge the claims. Her rebuttal garnered 80,900 likes and over 1.2 million views. Ragusa, who has spent more than 14 years living abroad, told Newsweek that she was surprised to hear Bailey described the video as satirical, as to her the tone seemed sincere, and she felt it played into stereotypes rather than mocking them. "That said, I do think it opened up a bigger conversation about how people see other countries and how Americans are seen, too. That's why I felt it was worth responding with facts and a little perspective," she told Newsweek. A split image of Nina Ragusa hitting out at Bailey's hot take that Italy should not classify as a first-world country. A split image of Nina Ragusa hitting out at Bailey's hot take that Italy should not classify as a first-world country. @whereintheworldisnina/@whereintheworldisnina "It was funny, but also kind of frustrating to hear someone speak so confidently while being so misinformed. I felt like someone needed to inject some actual facts into the conversation," she said. Bailey told Newsweek that she used hyperbole and American stereotypes to spark a little controversy and commentary, not to make headlines. "The fact that it turned into a viral discourse and then got picked up by mainstream media says more about the current state of journalism than it does about my exaggerated travel opinions," she said. "It was never meant to be that serious." Ragusa wanted to provide a counterpoint to similar views Since 2011, Ragusa has been traveling and living abroad. She said this controversy speaks to a deeper topic she cares about: encouraging people to question what "quality of life" really means. While she still values her American roots, she believes it's essential to challenge assumptions that place the U.S. at the center of what a successful or advanced life looks like. Ragusa said that the views Bailey's video satirized were familiar to her, and while she doesn't encounter them often in real life, but she does online. In her response video, she highlighted that development is more accurately measured through indicators like healthcare access, education, life expectancy, and infrastructure—not whether a vacation rental has a dishwasher. She pointed out that amenities such as AC and dishwashers are available in Italy, but many residents simply don't see the need for them due to cultural and climate differences. Ragusa also addressed Bailey's suggestion that a lack of nearby hospitals proved Italy's underdevelopment, noting that "medical deserts" are common in both countries. She cited data showing that many rural U.S. hospitals have shut down in recent decades, leaving large swaths of Americans with limited access to emergency care. Bailey's video extended beyond Italy and described Paris as "terrible" while praising Scandinavian countries like Norway and Switzerland for seemingly having their "s*** together." Ragusa pointed out the inconsistency in praising one group of developed nations while dismissing another that shares similar systems. Another moment from Bailey's video that drew attention was her comment about returning to the U.S. and realizing her large American F150 truck wouldn't fit on many Italian streets. Ragusa used this to highlight the difference in urban planning priorities, arguing that European cities are often built for people, not cars—and that's a positive. Ragusa said she thinks views similar to those depicted in Bailey's videos are particularly prevalent from people who haven't traveled widely or researched life outside the U.S. She believes that limited global education and deeply ingrained narratives about American exceptionalism contribute to these misconceptions. Although she's only visited Italy briefly, Ragusa said her broader experience living across Europe, including in Portugal, made Bailey's satirical generalizations easy to refute. "I didn't need to visit every town to know that judging a country's development based on the presence of AC in your Airbnb is ridiculous," she said. Viewers share their thoughts The response to Ragusa's video has been overwhelming. While the comment section quickly became chaotic, she noted that many viewers supported her take and appreciated her fact-based rebuttal. Most appeared to have taken Bailey's video as sincere too. A stock photo of Gubbio, Umbria, Italy, Europe. A stock photo of Gubbio, Umbria, Italy, Europe. Lorenzo Mattei/Publisher Mix "This is why Americans are not well-liked when they travel—because they are arrogant," wrote one commenter. Another said, "She's confusing first world with first class. Her education deficit and ignorance is showing." Others questioned the logic of Bailey's criteria. "Wonder how many U.S. cities wouldn't be classed as First World based on her standards," asked Shane Ashton. One user contrasted materialism with lifestyle quality: "It's so interesting that her perception of first world is related to things she can buy... Meanwhile Umbria has 90-year-old women gossiping in the street with their besties, eating fresh food and drinking great wine." Some viewers were more generous towards the views expressed in the original video. One user, who goes by Allison, wrote that as temperatures increase in Southern Europe, AC should be considered a "life saving need" rather than a luxury. What are the facts? The video also triggered a fiery online debate about how we define global development—and what happens when personal comfort is conflated with a country's economic or social status. The terms "First World" and "Third World" originated during the Cold War to categorize countries aligned with Western capitalist democracies, the Soviet bloc, and non-aligned nations. Over time, they became shorthand for levels of development—with "First World" implying wealth and advancement, and "Third World" suggesting poverty and underdevelopment. Today, many consider the terms outdated and misleading, as they oversimplify global disparities and often reinforce stereotypes. Alternatives like "Global North and South" or classifications based on income levels are now preferred in academic and policy contexts. The Human Development Index (HDI), for example, is a summary measure used by the United Nations to assess a country's overall level of development. It combines life expectancy, education, and income. In 2025, both the U.S. and Italy ranked very highly on the Human Development Index. Italy scored 0.915 and the U.S. scored 0.938. According to Liz Delia, a travel writer for Zest for Latitudes, the video reflects a broader issue among some American tourists who expect other countries to mirror U.S. standards. She told Newsweek: "This incident reflects a broader issue among some American travelers who assume the world will mirror U.S. standards. "In reality, many aspects of life in the U.S. are the exception, not the norm. Conflating personal comfort with global development is not just inaccurate; it shows a lack of cultural awareness," she added. Delia also pointed to the role of social media in amplifying performative, sensational content—even when it's inaccurate. She noted that whether or not the original comments were sincere, viral moments like these can distort public perceptions of entire countries.
Newsweek
13 hours ago
- Newsweek
Woman Who Left US in 2017 Discovers Unexpected Consequence of Living Abroad
An American woman's TikTok video detailing the long-term cultural dislocation that comes from living abroad has gone viral on TikTok. Rachel Warren, 30, who goes by @sheislostinikea on TikTok, lives in Copenhagen, the Danish capital. In the viral video, she reflects on the strange feeling of being culturally frozen in time when living far from home. The clip has racked up more than 120,000 views since it was posted on August 3. "A lot of people don't really think about the consequences of living abroad," Warren says in the video. "And one of the weird ones is that your cultural context of your home country will forever be stuck in a sort of time capsule based off of the time you for cultural time capsule is forever stuck around 2017." Warren, who grew up in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., as well as northern Virginia, told Newsweek that she has been living in Copenhagen since 2019 but first arrived in the spring of 2016 for her studies and visited a few times between 2017 and 2019. "I did live in the U.S. for 10 months before I came over permanently," she said. "But during that time, I was living with my parents and saving as much money as I could for graduate school and the move that I wasn't really experiencing the culture, which is why I say I feel a bit more stuck around 2017." Warren's reflections on culture shock and time displacement come as more Americans are considering moving abroad. A February 2025 survey by Talker Research found that 17 percent of Americans said they would like to move outside the U.S. in the next five years, with Canada being the top choice. Another five percent reported they were already making plans, and two percent said they had begun the process of relocating overseas. Millennials made up the largest share of interested migrants, with 25 percent expressing interest, according to the survey. For Warren, her journey overseas was shaped by both curiosity and love. "I grew up around a lot of military kids and internationals so was always very curious about other countries," she told Newsweek. "In 2016, I studied abroad in Copenhagen and absolutely fell in love with the city and country. I also fell in love with a guy but didn't want that to be my only reason for being there, so applied for graduate school. He and I are still together." While her partner is not Danish—he is German—Warren said that fact has actually made her long-term stay more feasible. "Being an EU [European Union] citizen actually makes it easier for me to stay because partnership visas under Danish rules are much more difficult and expensive than getting partnership visas under EU rules," she said. Warren said the changes in the U.S. since she left, particularly following the era of President Donald Trump being in office and the COVID-19 pandemic, have been jarring when she returns to visit. "I am still in shock over the changes that came about because of Trump and COVID," she told Newsweek. "Some of the changes are good like the push towards more telehealth options and more digitalization in general. But other things are incredibly weird to me, like people ordering so many Amazon packages and DoorDash things even when they are living in a city. And overall people seem more isolated and don't seem to hang out with each other as much." Warren also noted how public life in the U.S. has changed in ways she finds unfamiliar. "I also forget how polarized things are. There have always been people with strong opinions but now it seems like people are living in different realities," she said. "The last time I was in the U.S. was in November and I was freaked out by the fact that so many stores have their items locked up now. Also, tipping culture has changed and people tipped more and for things that weren't tippable before I left." The distance has also impacted her sense of pricing and norms. "I don't know how much things cost. If you've ever watched Arrested Development [the television series], there's one clip that's like 'how much can a banana cost? $10?' and I feel like that," Warren said. Her time in Denmark has also reshaped her views on work and social welfare, noting that she used to a "little suspicious" about aspects of European and Danish life. "I couldn't imagine a company being productive when all their employees have so many days off but it works," she said. "Also, I cannot believe that the U.S. does so little when it comes to maternity care. In Denmark, they also have paternity leave, which I think is brilliant." She said: "My priorities have definitely changed. I care more about living a happy healthy life than individual achievements." A screenshot from a viral video posted by Rachel Warren (@sheislostinikea on TikTok), an American living in Denmark, talking about the long-term consequences of living abroad. A screenshot from a viral video posted by Rachel Warren (@sheislostinikea on TikTok), an American living in Denmark, talking about the long-term consequences of living abroad. @sheislostinikea on TikTok Do you have a travel-related video or story to share? Let us know via life@ and your story could be featured on Newsweek.
