Matt Lionetti and Tyler Whitman, of The Agency, and Sarah Desamours, of Douglas Elliman, shared their strategies for authenticity on social media with attendees at Inman Connect New York on Wednesday.

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On “Fixer to Fabulous,” renovation experts Dave and Jenny Marrs help homeowners turn dated, run-down houses into dream homes. And sometimes, if they’re lucky, they stumble across the best surprise a house can have: entire rooms that the homeowners weren’t even aware were going to waste.

In the episode “Builder Grade to Craftsman,” clients Patrick and Ashley Fitzsimmons have been married for five years, and are living in Patrick’s three-bedroom, three-bath bachelor pad. They think it’s high time to make the house work for the two of them, and they’re willing to spend a whopping $300,000 to do it.

While most of us don’t have that type of budget to work with, we can use some of their creative tips to update our own homes, room by room. Check out the lessons that Dave and Jenny taught us this week.

Do away with builder-grade beige

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Speakers at Inman Connect New York on Tuesday urged MLSs to adopt new datasets and make sure to share them in ways that are useful to agents and consumers.

Anywhere Brands President Sue Yannacone argued at Inman Connect New York on Wednesday that franchising helps brokerages scale up, and gives them tools they couldn't otherwise access.

A company that powers the home search for buyers using artificial intelligence, generating leads for agents, will enter new markets this year CEO Omer Granot said on Wednesday at Inman Connect New York.

Photo by ED JONES/AFP via Getty Images

The White House unveiled a series of new measures Wednesday that it said could protect renters both from rising costs and the burdensome practices hindering their housing searches.

The wide-ranging announcement follows advocacy campaigns from tenants, progressive activists, and Democratic legislators.

The measures included a bid from the Federal Trade Commission and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to identify measures that “unfairly prevent applicants and tenants” from housing and a pledge from the Federal Housing Finance Agency to examine proposed actions on tenant protections and limits to rent increases on “future investments.”

National median rent prices, though currently cooling off nationwide, soared by 21% between March 2020 and December 2022, according to Apartment List. For the first time in decades, the national average rent-to-income ratio is also at 30%, according to Moody’s Analytics, meaning the country’s renters are broadly considered “rent-burdened,” spending a third or more of their income on housing and putting themselves at greater risk of eviction and financial precarity.

"It's great brand-building," CEO Mauricio Umansky said of his family's new real estate reality TV show, "Buying Beverly Hills." "But more than the brand building, it was just meant to have a lot of fun."

At Inman Connect New York on Tuesday, a trio of finance executives seemed bearish on the state of proptech funding but bullish on its future.

Pioneers of consumer-first online home search weighed in from Inman Connect New York on rumors that CoStar has approached News Corp about purchasing Realtor.com parent, Move Inc.

When the market emerges from this down period, savvy broker-owners will remain judicious with expenses, three top executives said at Inman Connect New York on Wednesday.

Purchase loan requests rise 3 percent week over week as mortgage rates ease but remain down 39 percent from the same time a year ago.

A day after Compass CEO Robert Reffkin dismissed remote work as 'the killer of culture' at ICNY, Sanford argued on Wednesday that there's equal merit to virtual and brick-and-mortar models.

Comparing himself to Henry Ford and Elon Musk, CEO says he's reconfigured Better's assembly line to crank out mortgages in a single day.

A renovated 18th-century farmhouse in Hyde Park, a Tudor Revival home in Durham and a Craftsman bungalow in Houston.

"Reducing friction was yesterday’s play," Alpaca VC general partner Ryan Freedman told Inman in a wide-ranging interview. He stressed the need for a full suite of industry services.

Compass went public in April 2021, and ever since then the New York-based brokerage has weathered a market downturn and seen investors' appetite for shares fall significantly.

Getty Images / Realtor.com

Take two!

The “Spider-Man: Homecoming” star Laura Harrier is giving it another go with her home in Los Angeles, putting it back on the market for $3,349,000. The silver-screen and TV beauty had listed the four-bedroom, three-bath pad last fall for $3.5 million.

The pretty property, with 3,233 square feet of interior space and an airy, Spanish style, is located in the Whitley Heights Historic District. It was recently rehabbed by architectural restorer Mark Haddawy. Here’s a look at the details.

Realtor.com

Acquiring Realtor.com would significantly advance CoStar's push into residential real estate — and bring it into greater conflict with the industry's existing power players.

Photo courtesy of Haver & Skolnick LLC Architects via Houzz

Gardening in the winter might seem like a futile task, especially if you live in an area that experiences frigid temperatures and consistently wet weather. But smart gardeners know that minding their garden is a year-round job, even if they’re not actively digging in the dirt.

Spring is right around the corner, and there’s no time like the present to start implementing your seasonal gardening strategy.

“The main reason to work on the garden in winter is to get ahead of the game. Anything you can do in winter is one less thing to worry about in spring,” says Erin Schanen, Troy-Bilt’s gardening partner, a master gardener volunteer, and creator of The Impatient Gardener blog and YouTube channel.

Here are a few items to add to your to-do list that’ll help you get a jump on your gardening once the weather warms up.

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Nearly every homeowner has run into problems with a contractor at some point—and a new HGTV show delves into what goes wrong, and how to keep a renovation on track.

On “Rico to the Rescue,” Denver-based builder Rico León helps homeowners and the general contractors they’ve hired mend fences. If a conflict can’t be settled, León and his crew take over.

Interested to hear how to resolve a clash with a contractor (and protect money involved), we got León to share his best advice for calling out and holding the contractor accountable. Plus, he shares the biggest red flag to look out for during the hiring process to avoid a problem in the first place—as well as his favorite renovation in his own house.

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