Happy holidays everyone.
I was speaking to a few friends of mine who are in the "start up" scene and I was telling them about what I do (aside: I work in a small investment/development firm). Eventually, I went on a rant about how the RE industry has many inefficiencies that could be corrected via technology. I know there is Fundrise for capital raising and Zillow for aggregating housing data. However, there are many more opportunities for disrupting the RE industry. For instance, working in development, I've seen how sometimes contractors have multiple projects going on at once or their sub-contractors don't show up on time, etc. There could be some sort of a Yelp for sub-contractors that would hold sub contractors accountable for their work quality and punctuality. Or, to take it even further, why not create an online contractor bidding platform where developers submit upcoming projects and contractors can decide what to bid on. This can be done regionally or nationally.
Anyways, the above examples may be oversimplified but I was wondering if you guys had any thoughts on why the start up scene hasn't ventured into RE just yet and if you had experienced other inefficiencies in RE.
nice ideas--these have already been done though. I'm with a developer/GC doing ~$1B revenue annually and we currently utilize Gradebeam for such efforts. there are most likely more but the RFP's usually go out through a server and qualified parties can bid on the work. Angie's list presently exists for small handymen but I'm not aware of anything for Subcontractors. A lot of it is word of mouth but at the end of the day it all comes down to price. As a CM, my job is to weight the value of workmanship vs. subcontract value. Sometimes the low bidder does good work but it's pretty standard to get what you pay for.
Depending on the future of JOBS Act and with a growing interest in crowd funding you will see more innovations come about in the retail space. Your idea for a bidding website or platform for contract work is interesting and it reminds me of the A&E TV show "Shipping Wars."
I firmly believe innovations will come about in the real estate space since there is a lot of momentum due to crowd funding. In the meantime if I come up with any ideas I'll be sure to post them here.
Absolutely agree with OP. I work in San Francisco and it's infuriating how slowly real estate investors incorporate new technology.
Some cool companies:
https://www.thestorefront.com/ AirBNB model for retail space. Small businesses can pay a daily/weekly rate to place items in a nearby store
https://www.viewthespace.com/ Leasing platform complete with video walkthroughs and analytics for property management. Institutional owners are now adopting
http://www.trulia.com/for_sale/San_Francisco,CA/map_v Trulia's map functionality is great - sort by demographics, crime reports, schools and transit times. I don't use it for presentations, but it helps one understand an area
I am a big fan of AirBnB type models which equate to pop-up leasing models for commercial real estate. I would be interested in seeing how well The Store Front is doing.
One issue with the real estate industry is how local it is. For instance, I work for a developer and we have projects in different jurisdictions, each with their own approval processes. I thought about creating a platform where developers and jurisdictions can interact and make the approval process more efficient by having online walkthroughs for the initial stages of the process and real-time feed back from the jurisdiction as the approval advances. The issue is that you would have to go to each jurisdiction to upload their respective approval requirements making this seem not so feasible. Anyways, I think the local nature of real estate is what creates inefficiences but it is also what complicates the solutions to those efficiencies.
A key problem with your solution is that government personnel have no incentive to streamline the process and to provide excellent customer service. They generally get no incentive for improving processes or for speeding up delivery or for even communicating well with developers and providing good service. If you brought them your solution (a rational, thoughtful one) they would likely not be receptive.
Some local guys in Baltimore set up Kinglet. Sort of like Airbnb meets Regus. Office tenants can sublease unused space/offices.
https://www.kinglet.biz/
I'm really interested to see where WeWork is 2 years from now. Would like to see if they ramp up acquiring/developing properties of their own.
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