Last week, I talked about the Keller Williams new consumer play: purchasing Smarter Agent. I’ve long been a skeptic of agent branded/template apps, for two main reasons:

  1. User acquisition costs are too high.
  2. Zero unique functionality meaning zero reason for a buyer to download / use them.

I still have yet to hear a good response. The core question remains: what is differentiated about “agent branded” apps? The only answer I’ve ever heard? Nothing.

A 2008 strategy in 2108. I don’t get it. KW needs to do better.

Especially since I broke my collarbone and several ribs in a motorcycle accident, we figured this week was a good time as any for Greg Fischer to introduce himself and explain how and why he showed up somewhat out of the blue a few weeks ago to help out with Geek Estate Mastermind. Greg’s journey has been a nontraditional one. He grew up on the East Coast, traded time between Myrtle Beach and San Diego in his early adult years, spent a formative eight years in Texas, worked in tech in both New York and San Francisco, and finally, almost three years ago, settled down in Oregon at the crossroads of the Cascades and the high desert in Bend.

Transactions have always been a kind of sandbox for him. He can’t imagine participating in the real estate business and not having ever personally curated a deal. He was the kid who changed the oil in airplanes during the day but was studying how to run the airline at night. He still manages rental property in Bend. It’s the grind that fuels his competitive advantage and shapes his ideas.

Weekly Radar Sample

TRULIA TRUTH TRAINERS
I enjoy it when real estate technology companies share insights about design or development and think this look into Trulia’s machine learning and AI efforts is quite impressive. Deep Varma, VP of Engineering sheds light on how “Trulia got to work building three machine learning-based pillars: computer vision tools, a recommender system, and a consumer prediction engagement model.” Reading this piece also made me wonder why it takes so much computing power simply to apply some metadata to a photo to indicate that it’s a kitchen. If this data is so valuable, why aren’t brokers or MLS’ only publishing listings when the metadata is correctly submitted? Of course, I guess the whole benefit of systems like this is to override the fallibility of humans. -GF

AIRBNB AND RELO
Airbnb is a multi-billion dollar real estate company that deserves more attention. Depending on how you look at it, it can be considered one of the largest rental platforms in the world. The latest rumblings from Forbes are they are that “To continue to grow (and find demand in untapped markets), [Airbnb] is now going after three different areas: team off sites or retreats, team-building experiences, and relocations.” The writing has been on the wall for years. When will they make a major play at rentals, or even bolder, make a play for commissions? I have to imagine both are a matter of when, not if. -DM

Mastermind Member News

As a reminder, the purpose of the Geek Estate Mastermind is two fold:

  1. Curate the world’s most innovative and diverse community of real estate creatives, doers, and pioneers.
  2. Make our members wildly successful in their careers building real estate companies.

If you want to read the entire newsletter, and future weekly editions, please apply for a Mastermind membership below.

Apply for Membership