Brian, you’re right. We need leaders in this industry and unfortunately they are non-existent right now from the brokerage’s. For the most part large brokerages lack vision for the Internet and cannot lead. All they know is what worked in the past and until another brokerage steps up and does something different to lead the way, they will continue to mile agents from their money…yet do nothing to help them with technology.

So far I have only seem half attempts at doing something great online. Nothing significant has come from a brokerage. They rely on others to bring innovation and then decide to adopt that innovation after they are dragged tooth and nail by the consumer.

Here’s hoping brokerages step up and make a real attempt at doing something great.

[…] unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptCan you imagine what our real estate industry today would look like if these brokerages 5 years ago each budgeted $87 million a year for innovation focused on providing tools for their agents to provide a better customer experience? … […]

I think the real story here is 87 million , with a stated specific focus on building out RE communities. That means zillow is coming to eat everyones lunch. What will zolve’s response be once zillow makes that play?

Mr. Millstein, thank you for your comment. Zolve’s response will be, “Good luck Zillow, that could be good for the real estate customer if done well.”

I do not think that the $87 million raised in venture capital is the real estate story. For me, the story is why an industry outsider is doing things that should have been done by the industry players 5 years ago. Or, why these industry players are not even trying to compete with Zillow now.

No brokerages are even trying.

Brian –

Thanks, we’re stoked and plan to keep pushing the envelope.

Leonard –

We’re a media company. Our job is not to steal your lunch but to feed you business. Please check out your advertising options on Zillow:
http://www.zillow.com/ezads/GetStarted.htm?s_cid=ez-site-adwithus

I’m not sure why its shocking , the brokerages are working on making sure they are competing in there core competency.

Based on your logic Clark construction should make a contracting & construction social network. It’s not what they’re good at and its too risky and potentially not rewarding enough for them to get good at it in comparison to the revenue they get by focusing on there core competency.

I think it has to be done by a ‘outsider’ to avoid conflicts of interest.

To David G:

I didn’t mean it in that sense , I’m sure its going to only help the RE professional. I meant it just might be the online community that kind of wraps up all these niche residential real
estate communities/ online products into one immersive platform.

Example:

If I can take my zillow profile and with a press of a button generate my agent home page , why do I need uberator?

Example:

If I can mix in zillow’s already massive data collection with social aspects and ‘spheres of influence’ why do I need zolve?

Thats what I meant by ‘coming to eat everyones lunch’.

Leonard makes some good points, but his first sentence about brokers focusing on their core competency does beg the question, what is a brokers core competency? Is it simply providing excellent representation of their clients during real estate transactions? I think not. Of course marketing and client services are very important right now, and that is where the brokers continue to get a black eye. Based on what I have heard from 75% of the brokers I speak with lately, it isn’t that they don’t want to offer these services. In most cases, it’s worse. They don’t even know why these services are beneficial to themselves and their clients, and therefore don’t view it as something they should become competent at. If you want an excellent example of a company that refused to redefine their core competency until they collapsed, look no further than Kodak. They are still trying to dig their way out today.

[…] $30 million in venture capital. Actual analysis took until today with Joel Burslem and Brian Wilson. Required […]

“Based on what I have heard from 75% of the brokers I speak with lately, it isn’t that they don’t want to offer these services. In most cases, it’s worse. They don’t even know why these services are beneficial to themselves and their clients, and therefore don’t view it as something they should become competent at”

Which is precisely why a brokerage, even a very small one, that embraces — dare I say exploits — technology can run circles around the old schoolers.

Mr. Millstein raises a good point about what are the real etate brokerage’s core competencies. I have been thinking more about that and will create a blg post addressing that in detail. In general, I completely disagree.

I have owned two different real estate brokerage franchises and in exchange for your money a franchise purchase buys you two things:
1. A brand.
2. Systems.

If you really think about it, these are the only two things that separate franchise brokerages from independent brokerages. This is why the major franchises all look the same today. They all have watered-down, unenforced brands that look exactly the same and they are all offering either a gateway to or a discount to the sames Silicon Valley technologies.

I am writing another blog post about Redfin basically lamenting that it could have been something really special had it not decided to define itself as “cheaper than the other guys and a great website.” With more patience, they could be positioned as an emerging national brokerage to be reckoned with due to their leadership in technology innovation.

Mr. Millstein’s opinion that real estate brokerages should not be focused on real estate technology development for their brokerages is probably the justification that these national players are using to instead spend their billions on fluffy television ads that yield no direct benefit to their agents.
Technology is most important ingredient.

@BW

You can’t see forest for the tree’s.

You have a bad case of technological myopia my friend.

What is the head of one of these brokerages gonna say to his board when he gets rocked by his competitors because he allocated to much time and resources to building a online community/application platforms to help a community who has largely shuttered at the sight of technology. Its much more than just code and engineering , its a massive marketing effort to make the community even embrace such tools.

Not that it’s not worth it , I whole heartedly agree with you that it is. But they are business men who have boards to answer to and bigger fish to fry.

And you still didn’t answer the part about how any of these smaller RE tech firms plan on competing with zillow. Who will I’m sure aggressively market and push THEIR BRAND to get over the hump and push back from the massive RE community. How can any the RE startups hope to compete against that?

[…] Yesterday Zillow collected $30 million in venture capital. Actual analysis took until today with Joel Burslem and Brian Wilson.  […]

[…] Yesterday Zillow collected $30 million in venture capital. Actual analysis took until today with Joel Burslem and Brian Wilson.  […]

Brian, I couldn’t agree more, especially the part about Redfin. I have been wondering for some time now why most of the high tech brokerages in this country keep going down the discount road. It makes absolutely no sense to me that the two appear to be so closely tied.

Leaonard, you ask how the brokerages are supposed to compete, and my opinion is this. Brokerages can offer something that the technology companies cannot….brokerage services. One of the technology companies biggest challenges has been effectively connecting the agent and buyer/seller via their technologies. After all, for a tool to go from “cool” to useful, that is what has to happen. I’ve reviewed just about every real estate technology there is, and I am very comfortable saying that there is very little that a brokerage couldn’t do if they really wanted to. They would have such a tremendous advantage not having to rely on ad revenue for their technology to be successful. They would be able to tap into the biggest pool of money in real estate, which is the revenue generated from a transaction.

I look forward to reading your blog post Brian. Please excuse the plug but I wrote this a few weeks ago on my plane ride home from the RIS technology conference. http://www.incredibleagent.com/blog/?p=71

Needless to say I was frustrated when I wrote it.