A baseball team gets evicted from its stadium, a five-year-old lawsuit is settled, and a pizza chain loses 250 stores. From the wild and wooly world of real estate, here are our Hits and Misses for the week of Feb. 2-6.
Miss: A Truly Foul Ball. At a time when many cities are trying to attract sports teams by offering to build stadiums, the City of Whiting, Indiana, is going to opposite route by evicting the Northwest Indiana Oilmen from its Oil City Stadium. The team, which is part of the summer collegiate Northern League, has played at the stadium since 2011, but city officials abruptly evicted them with no explanation – even as the Oilmen offered to lease the stadium for $40,000 to $60,000 a year. The team is now scrambling to find a home for the coming season, which starts in four months. Incredibly, Indiana officials are going out of their way to lure the Chicago Bears to the state by promising to build a billion-dollar stadium, but they don’t want a team that is willing to pay for its own venue? Go figure.
Hit and Miss: Enough is Enough. This week, Keller Williams became the first brokerage to settle the Batton antitrust lawsuit, paying $20 million to put this long-running matter behind them. The lawsuit was filed in 2021 and accused several major brokerages plus the National Association of Realtors of running a conspiracy that kept real estate agent commissions elevated and resulted in higher home prices. (Similar charges were at the root of the Sitzer/Burnett case that resulted in industrywide changes to how commissions are structured.) President and CEO Chris Czarnecki sent an email statement to his agents saying the settlement “allows us all to turn our attention back to what we do best: delivering unparalleled value in an ever-evolving real estate market.” This could be seen as a Hit to move away from a five-year-old annoyance, but it could also be as a Miss for capitulating to a lawsuit that many considered to be ill-focused.
Miss: A Pizza Puzzle. This week, Yum Brands announced that it was planning to close 250 Pizza Hut restaurants across the US during the first half of the year. The Associated Press reports the chain has more than 6,000 locations in this country, but it has struggled in recent years against competition. Oddly, Pizza Hut is more popular overseas – the Chinese market, which is the second largest for the chain outside of the US, accounted for 19% of its sales. Yum CEO Chris Turner said the company is reviewing options for the chain, which could include its sale. Gee, wouldn’t it be funny if a Chinese company buys Pizza Hut?
Miss: Glossing Over the Problems. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’ State of the City speech this week placed a surplus amount of attention on the preparations being made for the major sports events that the city will be hosting over the next three years. But according to ABC7.com’s coverage of the speech, Bass spent a lopsided amount of time discussing this summer’s FIFA World Cup, next year’s Super Bowl and the 2028 Olympics while offering relatively little attention to problems including the lethargic rebuilding of the wildfire-damages communities and the egregious homeless crisis that has never been resolved. Oh, she also threw in a slam at ICE agents arresting illegal immigrants – after all, she’s up for re-election.
Miss: A Royal Mess. Forcing someone out of their longtime home against their will is never pleasant, especially if the evicted party is a family member. Thus, we can imagine the unhappiness being experienced by King Charles III in having to remove his embarrassing young brother, the royal formerly known as Prince Andrew, out of his longtime Windsor Home. The British tabloid The Sun reports Andrew was taken from his home in the middle of the night and relocated to the royal Sandringham estate in Norfolk. While Andrew’s relationship with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein has created a PR nightmare for the Royal Family – the king stripped Andrew of his royal titles because of this scandal – the ex-prince’s boorish behavior after new releases from the Epstein files was the last straw. According to an unnamed source, “The fact he’s been seen driving around Windsor laughing and looking like he hasn’t a care in the world hasn’t gone down well with the Royal Household.”
Hit: Homebuying During the Super Bowl. Last week, we reported that Redfin is going to present its first Super Bowl commercial, with Lady Gaga as its star. Well, the company has another promotion tied to the game. After the commercial airs at around 8:00 pm ET, it will begin The Great American Home Search, an online game via the Redfin app where the winner could snag a home valued at more than $1 million. In the 48 hours following the commercial’s broadcast, Redfin will release six app-exclusive prompts that guide players to the million-dollar home shown which appears directly in the commercial. By using Redfin’s search tools and filters, players will embark on a hunt within the app. The winner is the first eligible participant to solve all six clues and identify the home. Check out redfin.com/The-Great-American-Home-Search for more information on what this promotion involves.
Phil Hall is editor of Weekly Real Estate News. He can be reached at [email protected].
