Top Three Real Estate Tech Insights

When BuiltWorlds surveyed the commercial real estate owners, developers, and brokers in our Real Estate Tech Forum about their favorite technology, the most popular answer was Microsoft Excel. After hearing this data, Larry Serota, the Executive Managing Director at Transwestern, announced, “the real estate industry is archaic and ripe for disruption.”

Fortunately for real estate owners, developers, and brokers, the number of innovative solutions on the market is expanding exponentially. In order to get a better sense of the real estate tech landscape, the BuiltWorlds Real Estate Tech Forum turned to the co-founder of Truss, Bobby Goodman. Here’s a sample of his most compelling insights.

You probably don’t own your CRE data

On most CRE platforms, when you list a property, the platform owns your data. After learning this fact from Goodman, Anthony Hodes, a Managing Partner at HASE Companies looked a bit alarmed. “I just used LoopNet to list a space and now they own that data and my photos?” Hodes exclaimed. “I guess I must have agreed to terms and conditions.”

To which Goodman responded, “you and everyone else in the industry.”

CRE has a HUGE transparency problem

“Transparency has been proven to get things done more efficiently, but lack of transparency is a big problem for our industry.” Goodman related. “However, there are a handful of companies trying to change this.”

Goodman is devoted to making Truss as transparent as possible. “From the listing side of the house we get not only base rent, but all utilities,” Goodman explained. “We provide full pricing transparency so the tenant already knows what to expect.”

He also praised CompStak for its devotion to transparency. CompStak crowd-sources CRE data to create a database of lease and sales comps. The company claims it will cause deals to close faster, benefiting the industry as a whole.

People are still real estate’s most important asset

“If you had asked me two years ago if brokers would be obsolete, I would have said absolutely,” Goodman confessed. “Now I say no way. Tenants need someone who is on their side who is empathetic.”