... quite a few things happened. 
I spent January in Costa Rica surfing some of the best waves on the planet (Santa Teresa). It was a brilliant.
The first three weeks was offline and then I worked remotely the last two weeks. Combining a Swedish lifestyle (6 weeks vacation a year) with the possibilities of the web is great. (Also happy to give Michael Arrington more fuel...)
Hemnet - Major changes in the management
The largest search engine on Swedish market is looking for a new CEO after that Björn Dietmann has stepped down. The news was picked up by PropertyPortalWatch. Impressive. The press release is found here (in Swedish).
There are more changes at Hemnet. After seven year as chairman, will Lars Kilander be replaced by Per Johnler(who also is CEO of Fastighetsbyrån, one of the largets brokers in Sweden). However, Lars will still be on the board. Finally, Hemnet also has a new Director of Sales; Andreas Löwgren(an article in Resumé).
The question is; has the pressure from Booli and Boliga forced those changes to occur?
Boligan launched in Norway
The Danish residential search engine is continuing its Nordic growth. On the same day as Inman, they entered the Norwegian market. Press Release is found here. More is found at PropertyPortalWatchand an earlier post on this blog.
The Inman Conference New York
Early in January the Inman event Real Estate Connect NY 2009 took place in New York. Read about it at Inman, Mike's Corner, Notorious Rob, Jay, Matrix and Dustin.
I had the opportunity to visit their event last summer in San Francisco and it is for sure an energy boost. (Even though I prefer more commercial real estate focus.)
If you are Premium member of the Inman service you have a great source of information from event on their site. Including for example a 25 pages summary paper and video of quite a few of the speeches! Way to go.
For the first time ever (I guess) there was a Swedish firm represented on the stage, Booli (a residential search engine, covered here). Unfortunately, they haven't put this video on the web yet.
Zoopla raised more money
The UK based residential property information and valuation service has raised another £ 3,75 million. Great coverage at the Renthusiast.
Morten Lund was declared personally bankrupt
Not much real estate connection (more than that the bank took his house), but what a believer in the web Morten is. This story is a must read for any entrepreneur. Don't miss the video (at the bottom) of his speech at Le Web a few months ago. Read more at his blog.