The bet nobody else is making
Most of real estate technology is betting against the agent. Go direct to the consumer. Cut out the middle. Build the thing that makes them unnecessary.
I'm betting the other way.
I told Jeff Fargo on Fargo Talks that I don't root for the underdog. I root for the person I know can do it who nobody has given a chance. That's a different thing, and the difference matters here.
Are agents actually behind?
No. Nobody invested in them.
Ask why an agent is slow to pick up new software and the industry answer is that agents won't learn it. I don't buy that. Look at what they get handed. Documents that won't work on a phone. Tools built for the top producer and sold to everyone else. Systems that assume somebody else handles the admin.
Give anyone that and they'll look reluctant. It isn't reluctance. It's what happens when nobody builds for you.
What is an agent, actually?
A small business, run by one person, sitting in the middle of the largest financial decision most people ever make.
They market. They prospect. They advise. They negotiate. Then they do their own coordination and paperwork at nine at night. There are more than 200,000 of them in California and about 1.4 million REALTORS® nationwide, doing exactly that.
That isn't a niche. It's one of the largest small-business populations in the country, and almost nobody has built for it seriously.
So what's the bet?
Take the work that pulls an agent out of the room, and leave them the part only they can do.
Not the conversation. Not the read on a house, or on the two people standing in it. The paperwork.
They're not underdogs. They're the biggest association in the country, and they've just been underserved.
We're betting on the agent.