The Opportunity for Mobile Software to Power Teams
There are a lot of people who think the future of real estate is high performing agents, and teams. Zillow is in the camp. I’m in that camp as well. I don’t happen to think most people should be independent agents. Being an entrepreneur is not a skillset everyone has, and many independent agents would likely be far happier and more productive as part of a team.
I spoke with Tamir Poleg at Real a couple weeks ago. After hearing about the model, the first thing I thought of was eXp Realty. Honestly, there are a lot of “innovative” real estate brokerages, and I’m not exactly sure what differentiates them from each other and to the consumer.
From what I’ve seen in this industry, there are very very few companies that are great at both the ins and outs of a brokerage business AND building great technology. From a monetization perspective, unless you raise Redfin-like money, you’re either a brokerage OR you’re a technology vendor. It’s hard to focus on both.
That said, what got me thinking from my discussion with Tamir discussion was their emphasis on teams.
Is it possible to run an entire team’s day to day business operations directly from a phone / tablet?
That’s certainly an opportunity for a startup to chase. Anyone already working on mobile software that does this? If you’re an agent/broker on a team, what technology products do you use?
graymoment
Posted at 19:48h, 22 MarchInteresting perspective. I have been actually wondering why every decent real estate technology product that comes out IS team centric, and wish there were better options available for individual agents.
Drew Meyers
Posted at 22:45h, 22 MarchReaching individual agents is ridiculously expensive.. teams are hard to reach too, but at least they spend more money per month because they are doing more deals to invest in the business.
Peter Liem
Posted at 11:13h, 23 Marchagreed…big team agent has more money and did millions of dollar in GCI, but don’t you think there are tens of individual agent (full time not part timer) for every one of those big team agent? And they need the tools to support their business model too. They might don’t need expensive and complex CRM to support their business model but there are lots of room for improvements to make their work more efficient.
Drew Meyers
Posted at 11:46h, 24 MarchI don’t doubt that. But just because there is a market doesn’t mean someone can serve it in a way that makes financial/business sense. That’s not to say it can’t be done, just that customer acquisition costs are high.
graymoment
Posted at 21:22h, 31 MarchI don’t see why the cost per seat would be any different for an individual agent versus a team. In fact, an individual agent should have a lot more margin in their numbers because they are not paying team members and playing the numbers game. I don’t think I am unique because I know many other agents in my office that do well that I could easily sell a product to (if I had one) because individual agents need more help and wear more hats than team agents who play different roles.
I see the resistance from vendors all of the time. Boomtown, Curaytor, etc. If someone made a product like theirs and have agents ownership of the content, you’d have a huge pool of agents willing to pay $500-$1,000/month (plus any ad spends) for it. The thing is, individual agents don’t want to just buy leads to feed team members. They want to build clients and presence, and want to own their efforts.
Drew Meyers
Posted at 21:44h, 31 MarchI think you’re an edge case. I’ve dealt with many individual agents over the years, and from my experience there are few actually willing to invest a lot of money in their businesses (at least, not without expecting tons more than they are paying for in return).
“I know many other agents in my office that do well that I could easily sell a product to”
But they know and trust you already. That’s the hard part that isn’t cheap to replicate.
Sam DeBord
Posted at 07:27h, 23 MarchGood question–most of our tools are mobile now. We could run almost everything from our phones. It’s really not the most efficient way, though.
The point of a team is to specialize. The ISA/database/lead nurture/conversion role is going to be more effective at a desktop station with multiple screens. Anyone in team management will be. The agent in the field should have every tool be mobile. So that’s a bit of a hurdle for a team software builder.
Peter Liem
Posted at 10:43h, 23 MarchFrom my experience interviewing top team agent for 6 months to get validation on my other business model, the name BoomTown and TopProducer mentioned quite frequently. Some smaller team that don’t want to spend big bucks use Trello.