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Imagine a world where we use our own data to develop products that will provide greater value and insights to our businesses, agents and clients.
Where we can use live listing data, take into consideration unsettled sales, leased values of rental properties, volume of appraisals done in your marketplace and much more.
Will you not have better conversations with your clients if you had relevant, up-to-date data to do it with?
Real estate is one of the few industries I know where we run the risk of the supplier replacing us.
We have always been a fragmented industry, preferring to compete rather than collaborate, fearing being overrun by the franchise groups.
I have been in this industry now for over 30 years, and during that time, I have seen our industry give away data for free to technology companies. It started with property management systems, then customer relationship management programs, and now there seems to be a proptech solution that comes to market every week.
Don’t get me wrong, the evolution in technology has allowed us to create efficiencies in our businesses, digitise processes, become paperless and connect faster and better with our clients. In the process, however, we have given our data away for free, signed away the use of it by others who then resell it to us as leads, insights, benchmark reports and aggregate it out to banks and insurance companies for large sums of money.
We need to be very wary that we don’t give away every part of the value chain we have in the sale, renting or leasing of properties. Our margins are being eroded, and costs are increasing, so we have to look at adjacent income streams, and we cannot let our suppliers own this part of the value chain.
Data is worthless if it isn’t mined. It is even more useless if we give it away for free to everyone. Think about how much data our businesses have access to. It is much more than just the listing information.
The good news is that we still have the ability to take control as an industry of the data we have – and the most important point here is that the industry comes together to ensure that this happens.
Now is the time for us to compete and collaborate. Can we do this? Of course, we can. Let the agents compete in the marketplace, and as business owners and leaders, we should be collaborating to ensure that our industry is futureproofed and isn’t in danger of being cannibalised.
Real Estate Industry Partners announced a joint venture with Valocity a few weeks ago. Our aim was to partner with a proptech, which has been in the market for a significant period of time, has runs on the board and wants to work and collaborate with the industry to deliver a CMA product to market that will be at a lower price point, with significantly better features.
Work with us to futureproof the industry that has given much back to many of us.
Sadhana Smiles is the chief executive of Real Estate Industry Partners (REIP).
