The fundamentals of the Commercial Real Estate Industry have not changed. Relationships, knowledge and access to deals are still paramount to success. It’s the ways that Real Estate Professionals develop relationships and garner knowledge to transact deals that have changed.
As a Real Estate Broker, in 2015, I worked furiously with the original iPad surgically attached to my arm, taking business from those companies significantly more prominent than mine. I was blessed to have the technology I needed to find as much business as I wanted and grow my business to new heights. CRETech was barely a whisper, with only eighty different platforms available to the Commercial Real Estate Industry. Most platforms were so cutting edge that most companies would not hazard any resources on them. These platforms, however, allowed smaller firms – like mine – to impress clients by operating at the same level as top-tier firms, which when paired with more attention to each client and local market insights, was a game changer.
My workflow included logging into thirteen different platforms for an average of three hours a day. The time spent on multiple platforms was in addition to time spent on the phone with clients, negotiating deals, attending networking events, etc. At the same time, other brokers waited for the phone to ring. My fingers were doing the walking, sourcing new business, and building new relationships.
Any average day looked something similar to the following:
- Check Email Start of Day
- Check Costar, Loopnet, MLS, ProspectNow, AgileCRM, Visual Appraisal, etc…
- Call clients, vendors, and/or partners on current properties/deals
- Meet with clients and/or partners; execute agreements, negotiate, updating
- Prospect for new clients; cold calls, traditional letter mailing
- Check Email End of Day
- Attend Networking Event(s)
So what has changed? To say that technological innovation has simplified the way we do things would be an understatement. Technology is progressively powering every aspect of our world and behavior, and with its ongoing advancement comes its growing role in the real estate sector.
Everything has changed. Life as we knew it changed, but there’s no denying that the Commercial Real Estate Industry was still more "analog" than digital. Inroads in new technology took root, and even though the industry was slow – and I mean slow – to accept the changes, Covid-19 caused a paradigm shift in how we work, play, and live – worldwide, and what started as a necessity, is now here to stay – technology in real estate.
Long gone is the daily routine of the established deal makers whose typical response to the new technology was "I have done millions of dollars of deals, why do I need to change?" It has become "What do I do now? How do I stay competitive?".
Fast forward to today, and a Real Estate Professional's day now resembles this:
- Check Email Start of the Day, check Social Media for messages, and respond to texts as they come in.
- Check your Listing Platforms for leads, your Research Tool for Comps and new competing assets, your Client Relationship Management Tool for any new prospects or tasks, etc., etc.
- Call clients, vendors, and/or partners on current properties/deals
- Meet with clients and/or partners; execute agreements, negotiate, updating
- Via Video Conferencing Tools
- Via in-person meetings
- Prospecting for new clients; cold calls, follow availability changes across local properties, like/reply to owner social media posts, engage with peer groups and community clubs on social media, text message outreach, traditional letter mailing.
- Check Email End of Day
- Attend Networking Event(s)
We are now in a world with more tasks and even less time to complete them – no wonder the "old guard" was so resistant to change. There are only so many hours in a day, right? While one can optimize their tasks daily (Outlined in detail here), the way to grow your business and reduce demands on your time is to take advantage of the actual disruption in technology for Commercial Real Estate. The actual disruption in technology takes a broad approach by aggregating valuable data, while providing the wealthiest experiences through vertically integrated data exchanges and the best functionality from individual Commercial Real Estate platforms. A truly vertically integrated user experience/environment will be essential to any serious real estate professional, and the ability to communicate that experience and environment to your end-user will be the biggest competitive advantage.
Traditionally, these tools did not communicate with one another, and they complicated -- not simplified -- digitalization. Although in 2016-2019, siloed systems were manageable, but minimally effective, as the tremendous demand to bring the information together was the responsibility of the Real Estate Professional. Today, siloed systems are becoming increasingly ineffective and exponentially more expensive. A single person cannot manage the number of workflows or aggregate that much data in a reasonable amount of time. If we look at some of the largest Real Estate Companies, we see that they have entire teams focused on integrating their data across all groups for more timely, actionable insights.
Providing actionable insights in less time at less cost is why I founded CRE Collaborative! Founded in 2016, when there were only 80 different technology platforms to use, CRECo.ai was built to optimize how I accessed information, promoted deals, and sourced new clients as a Real Estate Broker. Today, when there are over 8000 platforms, CRECo.ai still aggregates a growing variety of real estate data and technologies in one place, using a simple interface to save its users – and me – time and money, while providing the most in depth actionable insights. Real Estate Professionals choose the tools they want, based on their individual needs, while being presented with solutions to enhance their business, based on Artificial Intelligence and industry shifts. CRECo.ai is the only platform providing interoperability and transparency between the various silos of data and technology through a search engine-style integrated portal.
In addition to saving time and money sourcing deals, CRECo.ai also provides a way to passively advertise and prospect for new clients. Effectively making all business development simpler and more effective through CRECo.ai, giving your company and brand a dynamic digital presence online, while also programmatically distributing your data/deals across all your major social platforms and making your data available wherever you need it via API feeds to other portals, CRMs, etc.
*Originally released at: https://quantumlisting.com/blog/fundamentals-in-commercial-real-estates-tech-enabled-world
By Andreas Senie
Founder & CEO CRE Collaborative Inc
Host CRECo.ai Real Estate Roundtable
Founding Broker, EAC Properties at The Higgins Group
203-307-2242 | Andreas@CRECo.ai
www.CRECollaborative.com