What are some of the biggest pain points and problems faced in the real estate industry today?

Some of my Coles notes on the biggest pain points and problems faced in the real estate industry today are as follows:

At current, real estate industry professional (Agents, Lawyers, Mortgage Brokers, Appraisers, etc…) make up the largest collective interest group attempting to monetize the economic derivatives of a given real estate transaction. The problem with this is that each of these independently self-interested professionals is also spending their marketing, advertising, and product development dollars in silos (to serve themselves/their individual businesses). The cumulative value of this independent spend would likely, if gathered in a collective, be multiple times greater than even the largest platforms development and operational expenditures.

The following statements combine to describe the industry’s largest pain points as I see them today:

1. Fragmented industry professionals & digital spending: The largest interest groups spend in silos, which results in a product that is too small to fix industry challenges or to truly innovate.
2. In the examples of unified spending we see today (at national associations/boards) the existing leadership groups have little to no foresight on how to spec, develop, monetize, deliver on and protect or grow digital products that will benefit their professionals; transactions, user search, compliance, etc… Unified spending on products that are innovating in this space is where these leadership groups should be concentrating to make an impact on the professionals they serve.
3. Nimble digital groups are finding product-market fit by actually selling to their customers and needing to provide value to maintain their recurring revenue. Boards and associations are drowning in a cyclical pool of collect, misspend, collect, misspend, collect, misspend, compounded over years of this repetitive and unchallenged behaviour.

“On the other side of addressing the pain points of conventional industry, we must also open up the true/productive conversation – What does the industry look like in 2,3,5,10,20 years and what opportunities will emerge for forward thinking interest groups as a result. There are many… many… many products to look into. The serious groups are actually trying to organize while addressing the market, finding product market fit with future thinking professionals and building the bridge between industry and consumer”. – Jeff Mziray – CEO – DigiRealty Technologies

Side note, some of the large digital platforms/interfaces/media companies are lacking some on-the-ground-intelligence and practical application of process-based real estate knowledge that will be vital to providing a fulsome and innovative real estate technology product that will be able to scale with the industry.

The conventional industry has the opportunity to come together with technology to help shape the Real Estate industry of the future. However, if the industry does not ban together soon, we could be facing another industry disruption that will change the face of the real estate industry as we know it today… Think Blockbuster > Netflix, Think Taxi > Uber. Can industry conventional hit back? If yes, it will be fun to see what it looks like!

My two favourite search portals on the US side are Trulia and Zillow. My two favourite Canadian platforms are DigiRealtyTechnologies.com (biased built-in) and Zolo. As of October 14th Zillow has officially launched real estate listings in Canada on their .com. On first overview the site is operational but the sold and Zestimate features are not available and listing inventory is very low. I will keep an eye on this and update this article when/if the updates take place.

Jeff