This year was definitely the year that lawsuits changed the real estate industry. One of the important legal cases being decided now is the class action lawsuit turned DOJ investigation of RealPage for its use of a pricing algorithm to help its clients set the highest rent. What happens in this important case will determine the company’s fate as well as the ability of other tech companies to sell pricing tools.

The other landmark litigation of 2023 was the commission splitting lawsuit against the National Association of Realtors and some of its biggest members. The decision, along with the other copycat lawsuits that followed, is changing the way that brokers are able to charge some sellers commissions and is threatening the very existence of the industry’s largest trade group.

Will some of the people who moved across the country during the pandemic move back? Our data-centric article that looks at rent and vacancy rates for some of the pandemic’s most popular relocation destinations found an audience of people looking to answer that very question.

Another important trend in the property market is the growing cost of property insurance due to the increased risk of natural disasters. The state that has the most risk, and is feeling the most stress on its insurance market, is Florida. How it deals with the growing burden of indemnification will have impacts on the rest of the country if the climate continues to change.

Everyone loves to read about a shiny new office. Especially when that office is being designed for one of the companies that built the digital infrastructure of much of the creative world. Adobe’s approach to office space, as well as their beautiful new building, made this article one of this year’s favorites.

This article is a bit of wishful thinking on our part. Last August WeWork rolled out a rebrand and we saw that as a good sign of a possible comeback. A lot of other people obviously liked that story but, it ended up being nothing more than that: a story.

Interestingly, we saw a spike in search traffic for “WeWork” right before the company announced its bankruptcy. This article benefited from that spike. Who knows if those searches were from people who had gotten wind of WeWork’s troubles or just the collective conscious feeling that something was in the air?

We have seen growth in our multifamily audience this year. Understandibly so, it has been one of the bright spots to an otherwise pretty difficult year in commercial real estate. Here we see one of the rather futuristic concepts, flexible rent, getting some attention in a time when many renters are struggling to keep up. 

This article just came out as part of our new technology section. We write about what is happening at the cutting edge of new technologies every week and this week happens to be all about elevators. Turns out, vertical transportation isn’t content on just going vertical anymore.

This year’s top post got a boost from a mixture of star power and controversy. This article was used by many on social media to either tout JP Morgan’s sustainable business practices or as an example of the company not going far enough. The building and the company building it have become a battle ground for the ESG movement in the financial services industry.