Interview with Simon Baker, CEO RealEstate.com.au

We caught up with Simon Baker, CEO of RealEstate.com.au, at Inman Real Estate Connect in New York. Simon discusses:
- What its like to be 58% owned by Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp, which also owns Fox News and MySpace.com.
- What its like to fly in Rupert Murdoch’s jet.
- 2% commissions in Australia & the UK
- Newspaper classifieds are dying a fast death in Australia & the UK (Newscorp owns several newspapers, including The New York Post and The Daily Telegraph.)
- Will Trulia buy RealEstate.com.au or the other way around?

Interview with Craig Newmark, Founder Craigslist

Craig Newmark talks to us live at the Inman Real Estate Connect conference in NYC about what’s up with Craigslist these days. Craig discusses why they started charging for rental ads in New York, how he fights spam listings and what his day-to-day is like as “Chief Customer Service Rep”. Sorry for the interview’s sudden stop, but some poor kid tripped on the power cord in the middle of recording.

Redfin vs. Realtor.com’s Allan Dalton

Trulia’s rogue video-blogger Sean Black was able to capture some of the now infamous Inman Connect debate between Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman and Realtor.com’s Allan Dalton, and we thought we’d share it with you.

Allan gives Glenn a run for his money on stage at Inman Connect in NYC. In typical Dalton fashion, Allan gives Glenn the old one two punch while Brad (Inman) tries to hold him back. Allan landed a few good ones right on the chin, but Glenn held his own.

There’s been some great coverage of Inman’s Real Estate Connect in NYC, live from the conference:

Real Estate Connect’s official blog
Inman’s coverage of the Redfin v Realtor.com debate
Glenn Kelman posts his debate redux on the Redfin blog
Kevin from 3 Oceans covered the panel, complete with his predictions of what Dalton would say (and we agree, two out of three aint bad at all)
Real Estate Connect Happenings at True Gotham
Sellsius and condoDomain have pictures of many of your favorite real estate bloggers
Seattle PI’s John Cook provides his take on the panel
CruchBack shares their view here

Wednesday Additions
Joel from future of real estate marketing provided his highlights (with a promise of more to come)
Transparent Real Estate provided his updates here

Consumers call the shots, according to Kaira & Harley Rouda, COO & CEO Real Living

Kaira & Harley Roada tell Trulia’s director of marketing Heather Fernandez how technology has helped make them one of the largest real estate franchises in the country. The verdict: you have to realize that the consumer is in charge of how they want to communicate with agents, not the other way around!

Interview with Mike Pappas, President Keyes Company

Sales of residential real estate plunged 30-40% in Florida this year. Mike Pappas, President of The Keyes Company, a $4.3B Miami brokerage with 2000 agents and 32 offices, tells us how his company is going to thrive in this difficult market.

Mike will spend 100 days in 2007 traveling the world as Chairman of the Young President’s Organization (YPO) to find out from CEO’s in various industries around the world how bring his company into the future. Meanwhile, he advises his agents to hunker down and go back to the basics of marketing homes and servicing clients.

Interview with Help-U-Sell Chairman Ozonian

I had a chance to sit down with Steve Ozonian, former President of Realtor.com and current Chairman of brokerage firm Help-U-Sell. His view: the future of real estate brokerage is all about transparency to the consumer. Sorry about the background noise, but it mellows out the second half of the interview.

Interview with Funda.nl’s CEO Marque Joosten

Welcome to the first in a series of video blogs where Trulians conduct interviews with real estate industry leaders, commentators and other interesting folk. We’ll be experimenting with different video players and editing software (let us know if you have any suggestions), so be kind and please forgive any initial bugs. Thanks to Robert Scoble for the idea!

In the first installment, I interview Marque Joosten, CEO of Funda.nl, the leading residential real estate listings web site of the Netherlands. He gives his view on how the Internet killed real estate classifieds in Europe and provides some advice for brokers and agents looking to more effectively advertise to their customers.