Real Estate of the future

This last week I was plunged into the world of programming and web-edge technologies.  I attended a user group meeting held by a multiple listing software vendor, and saw the Real Estate of the future. Some of this is in action today and only seems futuristic, some of it is about to happen, though it still seems decades away to many of us, and some is still speculation . . .  but which is which? Let me take you through a transaction. In the following sceanrio, you guess which is which.  

Sallie Sultani decides to sell her house. She browses the web with her cell while she’s at lunch to find the perfect Realtor. She sees Fernando Frank’s website and likes it, so she clicks on a link to connect to him immediately. Fernando is visiting his sister out of town, and his cell phone is charging, but the call is automatically directed to his sister’s land line from the “connect-stream” link on his site. Fernando borrows his sister’s laptop and, while they are on the phone, he runs a quick Comparative Market Analysis and sends it to Sallie. She agrees to his price and terms, and while she finishes looking at the analysis, she receives a listing contract from Fernando. He was able to have all Sallie’s personal information auto populated on the form. It turn’s out they both belong to an online phonebook database, so all he needed to do was enter her email address. She signs the form electronically, on her phone, and Fernando lists the property within 5 minutes after hanging up with Sallie. He has set a switch to allow his MLS to automatically syndicate the listing out through the Internet and it populates to over a thousand sites worldwide within seconds. Sallie sees the listing online and informs her friends and family with a click that sends them the listing on Facebook.

A few minutes later, in Germany, Rolf Erzatz and Sumitra Arjani decide to find a home for their move to Tucson. They want a real adobe style home in the South West so they search for that on Bing. There they find Arlette Applebaum’s site – Southwestern style homes are her specialty. There, Sumitra creates her own search-and-results website and find the Sultaini home. They open a “connection stream” to Arlette (who is already aware they have searched for a home on her site).  They tell her they would like a little more information on the views and any disclosure documents which might be available for this home. She opens their “stream” to all public documents related to the property. She also includes still and video links to bird’s eye and street level views. The Arjanis indicate they are interested in proceeding further through a vocal msm (as they are on the train to Zurich). So, Arlette attaches her Buyer-Broker agreement and a Purchase Contract to the stream with a sticky vocal which reminds them where to sign. This feature includes context sensitive, pre-recorded explanations of each line and paragraph in Arlette’s voice that are spoken by her animated avatar. The Arjani’s tweet a link to the listing from her website with a click and soon their friends and relations are weighing in on the decision. The Erzatz-Arjani purchase is soon tweeted all over the world. Sumitra’s uncle Raju in southern India decides to give the couple the gift of down-payment and all are happy.

Arlette then opens her stream to Frenando suggesting they add their client’s streams together (with permissions in place for pools of privacy) for the purpose of an offer on the listing. They do this and now each member of the conversation can see all the information they have permission to see in one place, whether it be documents, photos, text messages, tweets, voice conversations, videos . . . any information pertinent to this sale. They can also access areas which contain their private pools: One each for Ms. Sultani, and the Arjanis (for their friends and relatives) one for each agent and their clients, and others for every relationship which may have some rights to the stream but also privacy with others or other information. In fact each person in the stream can control what areas may be seen or heard by only themselves, everyone, or anything in between. Other “pools and streams” are beginning to open to the main flow. We see a stream for title and escrow services, another for the buyer and seller’s financial institutions, others to inspectors, appraisers and so forth.

The happy end to this story is that Sallie Sultani sold her house to Rolf and Sumitra. In this transaction they were able to settle on a mutually agreeable price very quickly, and everyone had access to all pertinent information when they needed it. Also, the entire sea of information about this transaction, every item from beginning to end and from every perspective, was available to preserve for each interested party. (Of course, privacy pools of information would only be preserved for the parties that own them.)

So, what is real and what is to come? Actually, everything here can now be done (using cutting-edge software) with the single exception of the “connection-stream.” However, even this is about to come into being with a new communication product/paradigm which Google calls Goggle-Wave.

For more about some of this see:

Voice Forwarding: Goggle Voice or “Grand Central”

On-line directory: Plaxo

Google Wave:

Client Portal services are available through a number of MLS vendors