Jun 28, 2010 10
All Your (Data)Bases Are Belong to Us
If you’re responsible for real estate brokerage operations, you owe it to yourself and to your company to read this post by Glenn Kelman at Redfin. I have said for a while now that I believe Redfin to be one of few viable models for real estate brokerage of the future, and this post helps confirm that belief. It’s a long post, and worth reading in full, but here’s the money graf:
But outside of calling one agent after another, the CB CEO has no way of knowing what his agents are doing; most work as contractors, for franchises, recording their deals in spreadsheets and notepads. Redfin on the other hand has a system for scheduling home tours and writing offers, which means we also have a system for storing data about every tour & offer. Months before the numbers are recorded at county courthouses or by federal agencies, we know when bidding wars are back, or when tire-kickers have taken over the market. We can see the whole elephant, and we’re minutely sensitive to when he’s about to roll on top of us or stampede through the jungle. [Emphasis added]
Fact is, far too many real estate brokerages pay lip service to the importance of technology. Even the ones who do invest are putting money and resources towards marketing technology rather than information technology. In the long run, I think the companies that survive the Great Recession will be ones who invested in information technology, rather than just another pretty website. Read the rest of this entry »
