Inman Real Estate Connect is Next Week, and Wow What a Time to Attend!

We’ve got the legal strait-jacket on Errol Samuelson over at Zillow, we’ve got a huge number of agents unhappy about the new “Coming Soon” off market listings listings, I think there are going to be major fireworks next week at Inman in San Francisco. Plus the speakers this year are, as always, amazing: Pete Flint, founder of Trulia, Glen Kelman of Redfin, Guy Kawasaki (who always gets me revved up), Galen Ward, and someone I am dying to grab drinks with, Joda Mize, founder of the Girl’s Guide to Real Estate .

My head is usually swimming at Inman, but I’ll try and blog/tweet, keep you informed. This business is changing faster than I can type, for both agents and consumers. Inman is the best place I’ve found to keep a pulse on those changes.

Meantime, maybe I’ll catch up, too, with Rob Hahn, who has a very interesting take on the Zillow v NAR war that is raging, and it really is a war. What does Rob call it? A “non-compete-disguised-as-a-trade-secrets case between Move & NAR v. Zillow & Errol Samuelson” and his take was pretty much the same as mine: Samuelson is going to have to have a lawyer by his side for a good year or so. Here’s the real meat and potatoes of his post, besides him blaming ListHub for every evil in the world:

A passage that is particularly nasty eyebrow-raising legalese is this one:

33. Samuelson’s testimony initially suggested that he would be improverished such that he wouldn’t be able to afford his house if the court issued an injunction prohibiting from working. A much fuller picture has emerged about Samuelson’s financials, calling the accuracy and completeness of his initial testimony into question.

That’s… harsh. Quite possibly unfair, even. But that’s what the judge wrote.

In any event, the findings of fact almost entirely favor Move & NAR. So the judge issued the preliminary injunction, but as is usually the case when such an order is issued, she writes this:

Move and NAR have a substantial likelihood of success on claims for threatened misappropriation of trade secret information.

Like I said, fireworks next week. Will the NAR peeps even sit next to Zillow? What if they meet in the bathroom? Stay tuned for more, much more real estate drama!