The other day, one term in the inbound traffic jumped out at me:

real estate coffee shop

Roasted-Coffee-BeansI’m pretty convinced whoever was researching that is pretty damn smart. The reasons a real estate coffee shop makes sense are some of the same reasons I believe a real estate co-working establishment makes sense.

People get coffee everyday, same as they go to work everyday. Lots of what people talk about at coffee shops is – you guessed it – real estate. Why not optimize for that, and give people more context front and center?

If it were me, here’s what I’d include in the “real estate coffee shop”:

  1. A big tv / monitor that cycled through both new listings and solds within 2 miles of the coffee shop
  2. A really simple way to ask a real estate question (anonymously if desired), with the knowledge a real agent/broker will personally answer my question without bugging me for eternity. (I still believe whoever figures this out at scale is poised to deliver the next consumer win in the industry).
  3. A white board with the average sale price, volume, etc for the neighborhood, zip, and city. Perhaps update it weekly with new data. Tally the number of properties SOLD the day before within X miles.
  4. An iPad on every table with a pre-loaded app for searching real estate.

As a broker, you wouldn’t have to own the coffee shop outright, just partner extremely heavily.

There is a cat coffee shop in Seattle (see here), why not a real estate one? Anyone want to create a real estate coffee shop in Seattle??!!