Making real estate technology more than a side dish

Intuit releases software that revolutionizes accounting.
Microsoft releases Vista.
Apple releases the iPhone.
Nintendo launches Wii.

Lines snake around city blocks. Downloads ensue by the millions. Average, everyday people, motivated by technology, inspired by innovation, obsessed with creating efficiency in their lives, act on their desire to tap into the future — today.

People today know about these products before they buy them. They master them days after they break open the packaging.

Saving time, enhancing life, defining individuality – these are just some of the critical triggers that influence our behavior.

Manufacturers invent on that premise.
Advertisers help them express it.
Synergy with the consumer is achieved.

Real estate has been graced with its own innovations. From blog systems to e-signature software, online communities, CRM and TMS ” this list goes on. But adoption is slow. There are no lines. Only a handful download. Few display an obsession for creating efficiencies or breaking new ground. From vendors to brokers, and brokers down to agents, adoption of progressive technologies and practices has been far slower than it is outside of real estate.

Why?

Could it be that at the end of the day, despite the grand assortment of innovations for real estate, adoption lags because most real estate technologies fail to deliver what they promise? Or are they just poorly marketed?

If that’s not it, what is? Aren’t real estate people just as interested in creating efficiencies in their life and business as the rest of the world? Don’t they want to grab a piece of the future and live in it today?

I think both things are at play here.

How do we make products created for real estate more anticipated? How can we effect greater adoption and a greater appreciation of what change can bring to the table naturally, on its own, without having to offer it as a side dish at an office presentation competing against the deli platters, bagels and donuts?

–  Davison