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Big time announcement! We are excited to launch our FREE AI Literacy Courses for grades K-12! Through a grant with Utah Governor's Office of Economic Opportunity and in partnership with Davis Catalyst Center, Skill Struck created: 🔥 Semester & year-long AI Literacy courses for grades K–2, 3–5, 6–8, and 9–12 🔥 Lesson plans, plugged and unplugged student activities, and digital textbooks We are excited to be at the forefront of helping K-12 student gain the durable skills they need to make an impact in a changing world. We are just getting started!

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Growing Agency Combines Real Estate with High-Tech REAL ESTATE: Premier Property Partners Expect to Grow to 100 Agents in 2025 By Ray Huard RANCHO BERNARDO – Two veteran San Diego residential real estate agents, Rich Johnson and Shirin Alipanah, have formed their own real estate agency – Premier Property Partners. Johnson and Alipanah have also linked up with LPT Realty, a cloud-based international brokerage with operations across the U.S., Canada and the U.K. “Our mission has always been clear – support agents like family, give them freedom, build something bigger than a commission check,” Johnson said. “With LPT, we’re leveling up the game, bringing choice, a familial, people-first culture, along with the best resources to foster agent success.” Based in Rancho Bernardo, Johnson and Alipanah plan to open an office in Palm Desert. Combined, over a career dating back 30 years, Johnson has led more than $10 billion in sales. ‘I’ve had many offices over the years throughout San Diego County and Coachella,” Johnson said. “At one point, I had 19.” A graduate of Cabrillo College, Johnson spent nearly 20 years with Windermere Homes & Estates. He teamed up with Alipanah because, “I was anxious to get more in the trenches instead of overseeing 400 or 500 agents,” Johnson said. Alipanah has a background in high-tech and real estate, with stints as a technology partner with Meta, a real estate advisor with Shirin Alipanah Realty Group, and head of the IT Program Management Office of Jack in the Box. “We’re kind of bringing the best of tradition along with a tech background,” Johnson said. Starting with 25 agents, Johnson said that he expects that Premier Property Partners will grow to exceed 100 agents by the end of 2025. “The industry’s shifting. Agents want more control. They want better systems. They want more financial freedom. They’re looking for how they can have more control over their own business,” Alipanah said. “We’re looking at creating something more than just a team that has all this fancy stuff, more than just another brokerage. It’s not just about recreating another team because there are so many real estate teams.” So far this year, the residential real estate market has cooled. “The market is experiencing a big correction right now,” Johnson said, adding that he expects that the market will begin to return to normal by the end of 2025. https://lnkd.in/gMHT6KTn #realestate #residentialrealestate #realestateagents

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It’s been a challenging few years in the housing market, but the CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® assembled a group of heavy hitters to talk about what the next year has in store. I was joined by Kayla Bruun from Morning Consult, Robert Dietz from the National Association of Home Builders, and Danielle Hale from Realtor.com while Jerry Nickelsburg moderated. We spoke particularly about the California market, but touched on a number of national subjects including affordability, building supply, and the room for more efficiency in home construction.  Our main takeaways are that there are reasons to be optimistic - despite our read that existing home sales were down 4% Y/Y in January (link to our data here: https://lnkd.in/gNrXGmSR)  - given lower rates, an improving labor market, and the attention by policymakers that more can be done to address supply constraints. You can watch the entire webinar here:  https://lnkd.in/g9jHv2iQ

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📊 Southern California Housing Market Update: February 27, 2026 🏡 📅 89 Days Expected Market Time (±0 Days WoW) 🏠 32,566 Active Listings (+1% WoW) 📈 10,930 Demand (±0% WoW) The housing market is beginning to cool after a few blazing hot weeks.🔥This marks the second consecutive week with no change in the speed of the market. Inventory is starting to rise faster than demand, with demand only inching higher due to a small increase in pending sales. Demand is now tracking closer to last year’s levels, which was not widely expected. With growing concerns around AI, job security, and the broader economy, fewer buyers appear ready to step in right now. 🤔 The positive news is mortgage rates. They are now the lowest we’ve seen since August 2022! 📉 As of today, rates sit at 5.99% according to Mortgage News Daily, which could not come at a better time. Let’s see how things continue to unfold. 👀🏡 #HousingMarket #RealEstate #SouthernCalifornia #MarketUpdate #HousingTrends

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How is ChatGPT changing real estate? I spoke recently with Lacey Newman, a realtor with over 16 years of experience who leads an award-winning real estate team. One use case she shared that stood out: Instead of writing property listings from scratch, she records conversations with homeowners about their favorite parts about their home and then uses ChatGPT to turn those stories into house descriptions. That way, the listings fully capture the heart of the home, humanizing the experience for both the buyer and the seller. 

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One thing that comes up constantly when I talk with older homeowners looking to downsize is their fear of joining an HOA. And they might be right to be worried. Homeowners association fees are soaring. The average HOA fee rose 42% between 2019 and 2023. And it's becoming harder to avoid them. 81% of newly built single-family homes sold in 2023 were part of HOAs — up from 62% in 2009. I talked with some retirees who think they might have to move out of state to find affordable retirement housing without costly HOA fees. Read it here on Business Insider: https://lnkd.in/gf5_v3ck

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ADU search interest is at an all-time high. We analyzed 400+ ADU city decisions in the largest 250 cities nationwide and here are our findings: There are 3 main tiers: 1. Emerging & Discretionary: ADUs are gaining acceptance, but are still largely approved case-by-case through variances and SUPs. (Typically, these cities are in the Midwest or East Coast) 2. Mature & Permissive: Cities that have undergone comprehensive, citywide ADU reform. Commonly found in CA, AZ, CO. 3. Contested & Evolving: Cities where the ADU framework is in flux due to political backlash or competing policy priorities. The typical transition from 1 --> 2 is where the most opportunity is created. We find that if a city approves a lot of SUPs / Variances for ADUs, there's a good chance they will introduce a citywide ADU reform soon. The "ADU Reform package" usually looks something like this: - Elimination of Parking Requirements - Reduced Setbacks - Streamlined Permitting - Owner-Occupancy Requirements - Increased Unit Allowance - HOA prohibitions (these are applied / not applied differently by different cities, but usually all of them are defined in one way or another) Some general trends: - ADU legislation is often used as "Gateway Reform" --> increased density later - ADUs and STR don't understand each other well... - The State vs. City Debate is still raging and there's lots of different opinions from various sources about this issue - People love ADUs. We've run a lot of sentiment analyses on different product types for our clients, and ADUs are being talked about most positively out of all of them. PS: You can find the full article with more details (and all sources) linked below :)

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If you lead an educational publisher, you face a growing challenge: improve profitability of your portfolio today and invest in capabilities and talent for once-in-a-generation changes in education and your portfolio tomorrow. To improve efficiencies, you’ve likely tested AI features in your content workflows—auto-drafts, summaries, tagging—but found gains are incremental. To realize a step-change in efficiencies, let’s reflect on a few hard facts about educational publishing: > Educational publishing is a labor- and information-intensive industry. > Portfolios are getting more complex—print, eBooks, courseware, customizations. > Most content workflows remain stubbornly parallel and manual, with few efficiencies. > Outsourcing was the last true step-change in profitability. That’s why improving your content workflow efficiency isn’t optional. It’s the only way to foundationally shore up margins now so you can build the capacity and capabilities to respond when market changes accelerate. Other industries have already shown the way. In finance, insurance, and pharma, AI agents are delivering huge productivity gains by taking on complex, labor-intensive, information-rich tasks—and in highly regulated environments. Educational publishing is just as ready. The leaders who deploy AI agents to transform content workflows will free up resources, regain profitability, and be best positioned to thrive in the next chapter of digital disruption. Have you taken a hard look at your content operations and started exploring how agents could transform them? Please see my full blog for the why now and how to begin. https://lnkd.in/eZapzX9M #strategy #AI #growth #edtech #enablinginsights

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David Joyner is back with his second guest column on Class Central. In 2020, he offered to translate assignments into Mandarin for students in Shenzhen. One of his own Mandarin-speaking TAs pushed back. The credential isn't just about what you learned, it's about proving you can do it in English. Five years later, that decision may be taken out of educators' hands. Browser translation, AI-dubbed videos, auto-translated submissions. The Babel fish from Hitchhiker's Guide is almost here. David's question for educators: Do we do anything about this? Or does self-localization simply further online education's mission to expand access? The Babel fish is almost here. Is education ready?: https://lnkd.in/eS98muXX Original artwork by Kiri P.

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In my spare time, I get to teach and do research in the USC Dollinger Master of Real Estate Development program. Just published a paper with my colleague Mike Manville at the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies on the unintended consequences of the Measure ULA Transfer tax. Here's a summary: In November 2022, Los Angeles voters passed Measure ULA—a new 4%–5.5% tax on real estate sales over $5 million—to benefit low-income renters. Despite being nicknamed the “mansion tax,” Measure ULA applies to all property types—apartment buildings, offices, retail centers, soundstages, studios, warehouses, manufacturing sites, and more. And while non-single-family properties generate a minority share of ULA’s revenue, they’ve borne the majority of the economic fallout. It’s one of the steepest transfer taxes in the country—and unusually, it’s not marginal. A single extra dollar over the threshold can trigger a tax bill of more than $200,000. That’s a design flaw with serious consequences. Since the tax passed, sales of properties over $5 million have collapsed—falling 30–50% more in the City of LA than in the rest of the County during the same period. This sharp decline is a leading indicator of slowed development. Housing projects have stalled. Commercial and industrial reinvestment has declined. Redevelopment was already hard in LA—now it's even harder. And despite its promise, ULA revenue is far below projections. The City expected $600 million to $1.1 billion per year. The average so far? Just $288 million. There's also a longer-term issue: slowed property tax growth. Transactions over $5 million have historically driven more than 40% of LA’s property tax growth. When those sales decline, tax base growth stalls—not just for the City, but for schools, community colleges, the County, and the State. The effect compounds over time. By year 10 or 12, the annual property tax revenue lost due to ULA may exceed the revenue the tax generates. Yes—but it’s complicated. The ballot measure severely limits the City Council’s ability to amend it. The most promising path lies with the State. Assemblymember Buffy Wicks has introduced AB 698, which would require deeper analysis before future transfer taxes can be approved. That’s a good start. But more is needed. LA’s housing and jobs future—and the stability of its real estate market and public finances—will depend on whether we can reform Measure ULA.

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Sacramento Joins the "Tech Triangle" including San Francisco • Sacramento • San Jose with new $50M commitment from Meta! Historic news for California’s Capital Region — Sacramento is now stepping into its role as a technology and innovation hub alongside Silicon Valley and the Bay Area. Meta has just committed $50 million to support a transformative downtown California State University-Sacramento campus project, helping convert under-utilized state buildings on Capitol Mall into a vibrant mixed-use destination that will include: = Affordable student and faculty housing = A new School of Public Affairs = Room for cutting-edge academic programs and an AI Center = Cultural and community spaces contributing to downtown revitalization This landmark investment isn’t just about construction — it’s about AI innovation, investment, equity, workforce development, and economic revitalization. It positions Sacramento as a place where talent is cultivated and retained, not just trained and exported. 📍 Read more here: Meta pledges $50M to help build a new Sacramento State campus downtown — CBS Sacramento: https://lnkd.in/gkJNHZy9 This partnership between Meta, Sacramento State, and state leadership signals a new chapter for Sacramento’s role in the technology ecosystem — bridging academic excellence, innovation, and community prosperity. #Sacramento #Innovation #HigherEd #TechEcosystem #DowntownRevitalization #Meta #SacState #AI #EconomicGrowth Eric Ball, Saurabh Suri, Saurabh Ranjan, Vikas Datt, Jennifer Baker Khan, John Hooker, Aaron Mondell Anderson, Patrick Bumpus, Yatish Mishra, Sean Mishra, Dan Wadhwani, Brad Squires, Mihran Berejikian, Jackson Crawford, Jason A. Vita, Peyton Crawford

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I had the pleasure of attending the 2025 ASU+GSV Summit. Much of what I saw showcased or heard evangelized started from a place of capability, not need: VCs beware. However, it was a great experience through the lens of a concept car show. There is a lot of potential, but solutions must be cohesive. They must align with the P0 of teachers' jobs to be done.

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