My love and hate for Inman.com

Before I bore you with a complaint, where do you get your real estate news from?

In our industry, there is only one primary news source compared to all the others, and that is inman.com. Sure there are other industry publications and news sources, but none seem to capture the attention or stir gossip like this one.

Inman is also known for its conferences and keynote speakers, but most of all, it's known for reporting on real estate drama. There is nothing like it which is why I love and hate it.

I don't like it because it costs anywhere between $100 and $200  a year. And you get access to everything Inman has to offer. But for some reason, they also email you a minimum of daily. Every day I get an email from Inman, and it becomes noise. One time when I let my subscription expire, I found the free version with just the breaking news-only articles all I want to read anyways. But occasionally, a headline that isn't breaking news interests me, and I want to click it, but of course, I need to have a paid membership to do that.

This annoyance leads me to my second point. The headlines read like clickbait, and they know it. Inman runs like the TMZ of real estate. That could be good, but it's also quite annoying for busy people. Which we all are.

My third issue is the engagement that we have with Inman. There is a comments section on every blog post; most of the time, it's empty. There's no collaboration and communication dialogue other than the author's writing. I've lost track of how many times I went to see the comments of an article to see if there's any engagement happening, and it's empty.

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Side note: Joe Manning Dot Com will be having a comments section soon. I need to build it. :D

Brad Inman is the only one that brings engagement with his articles. They are also the most controversial and written with high-level statements, which naturally get attention. For example, the most recent one was the industry's failure, attempting to combine everything into one platform at different brands like Zillow. That's going to bring more engagement than the day-to-day filler posted. Still, I often want to engage about things that interest me in the comments, like MLS changes, CRM updates, products, and services.

And last but not least are the events. Inman Connect has gone from one of the most fun events to the most boring one. That could be more about the stage of my career that I'm in. All of the online events they do since Covid are a big waste of time and money. The networking of in-person events in the exhibit halls has always been my favorite. Smaller-focused events on luxury, technology, and operations have delivered more applicable content. Clubhouse chats, TikTok lives, and others are significantly more inspiring and actionable.

So my relationship with Inman is that it's necessary, but it can also be very distracting, and it is a business that sells attention. Remember: when it comes to media, you are the product.

Some day I hope to have the trust and the size of an audience Inman has, though, so maybe I'm just jealous.

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Where do you get your real estate news? What are your favorite topics to read?