ICNY2020 notes
Here is a collection of Chris’ notes and random thoughts while attending Inman Connect 2020 in New York.
Brad Inman-
- Never been more excited about where real estate is as an industry
- Economy is fantastic
- People’s net worth climbing
- Savings rate 8x what it was 10 years ago
- Wages are going up
- It is our time to “own” the business
- Record levels of sales in 2020
- Lowest delinquency rates
- More entry level and affordable housing being built
- Tech is moving from agent centric productivity to consumer centric ibuying, ifunding and iclosing
- Opportunistic real estate agents are pushing engagement
- This moment belongs to you
Mike Delprete –
- The industry is moving very slowly but it has never moved this fast.
- Proven vs unproven
- Redfin and Compass grew from 1.5 to 3% from 2016 to 2019. 1% increase expected for 2020
- Ibuyers doubles last year from .25% to .5% (8.5 billion)
- Average ibuyer transaction 150-300k
- Purchase price to AVM – 98.6%
- Zillow and Opendoor driving trends
- 70% of growth is in new markets
- Tech enabled brokerages (discount or flat fee) Redfin like companies. Still very small and regionally based.
- Hybrid ibuyer models. Brokerages helping sellers buy home before selling
- Zillow lost 300 million in 2019
- Big bets on future profitability
- Perception is, and should be, that buying or selling a house is hard.
Kirstie Ennis –
- It’s the six inches between our ears that dictate what we are capable of.
- Learn how to suffer well. Life is hard.
- Pain gives you a new perspective.
- Remember your “why”
- If you can’t find a role model, go be one.
- Rest less and endure more
Ron Peltier-
- We need to focus on what the consumer wants and what works.
- Real estate is really home ownership services
- Create a superior customer experiences
- They want a simplified, experientially positive transaction
- Integrated services are key
- Everything old is new again
- Prefer to be judged by what you are doing vs what you are saying
- We need to expand our value proposition beyond the transaction
- Have a system to extract data and use it to provide value back to the consumer
- Be value added post closing
- We can’t charge more and give less
- The future is in the blending of housing and personal data
- Real estate is still a people business.
Ryan Seahant –
- Selling is helping a person make a decision that is in their best interest.
- Be trustworthy.
- Trust is the core of the sales process
- Client advocacy is the skeletal structure of his business
- Social media is a gift to sales people.
- You can build trust via social
- Those that listen are the best in any relationship
- The way people buy and sell hasn’t ever changed
- New media is changing the brokerage model
- All publicity is good publicity
Ten Tech Trends
- Super apps (we chat)
- Platform model (Uber, intuit, air bnb)
- Voice type and search
- Semi-mation (managed automation. 30% growth in VA’s in real estate the next 2 years)
- Text
- Broker tech (adoption challenge and push 3rd party costs down)
- Life as a service (we are sharing and renting everything)
- Bridging the gap (between buying and selling legs)
- The questionable future of online leads (who’s capturing and nurturing leads)
- UX – Digital meets physical (AI, lock boxes, virtual staging)
Other Misc. Notes
- Consumers are going to be demanding more
- Broker paid House fixing, staging, ibuyer all now “normal”
- 10 year prediction is less agents in industry with fewer doing far more.
- 10 plus years left before true end to end platform exists.
- Struggle is narrow and deep or wide and shallow application focus
- Lot of focus on tech between agent and client
- Question: build, buy or integrate
- Bi-directional integration is key
- Ask: does it save you time or make you money?
- Whatever is best today won’t be best tomorrow in tech
- Platforms that transform encompass multiple aspects of tech
- As AI gets better, people will start pushing back on privacy issues
- The most important tech “disappears” into the fabric of our lives
- On leads: speed to lead, follow up systems and long term nurturing are key kpi’s
- The lead process has to have more consistency and value
- Competitors are pushing farther upstream
- Leads are up and conversion is down
- The end user is typically in several funnels at the same time.
- They will go with the person that provides value and makes them feel valued
- Agents are super apathetic when it comes to leads
- Use video in business – add closed caption
- 85% watch video without the sound on
- Track ROI as well as ROT
- 74% of those listening to podcasts do so to learn
- It’s all about the customer experience
- We have to evolve past the transactional to the relational.
- If you don’t keep up with what is going on, you become obsolete
- The impact of autonomous driving and ride sharing are dramatically changing cities
- Individual car ownership will peak in 2020 then start to decline.
- By 2050 – 75% of the worlds population will live in cities
- The average car is only used 5% of the time. Impacting parking and storage
- By 2030, 75% of the population will use ride sharing as primary transportation
- 60% of all the trips in the US are less than 5 miles
- Developments are changing
- Parking ratios will change, so will garage space
- More green space, reclaiming hard top ground areas
- Streets will be turned into parks
- Parking will be reduced 25-85% depending on the area.
- Automated parking stacking.
- Autonomous cars can park inches away from one another
- By 2030 – 95% of us passenger miles will be done by some form of ride share
- More mixed use
- Drone and autonomous helicopter taxi service is coming in 2023
- You can tell a lot about a person by how the celebrate their wins.
- No one succeeds by themselves
- Find you lane and get really good at it
- We need to get way better at understanding consumer expectations and how they are evolving
- You can’t be good if you aren’t self aware
- Digital and personal transparency is so important in today’s world
- Take risks, leadership shows up in crisis, have a personal development plan
- Reserve the right to pitch vs starting with the pitch –
- First meeting is to experience a difference so they are receptive and curious and want to know more about you (question driven)
- Budgets are like diets. They don’t work. There has to be a belief system and process that supports that
- Don’t seek a balanced life, seek a harmonized life
- VC’s are investing 5x more in prop tech than any other technology
- Innovation will accelerate our industry
- Be the App Store not the app
- Historically agents have been search, home valuation, listing homes
- Future must haves – home financing that is certain and is guaranteed, creative down payment assistance, ibuyer offers, home trade in options, liquidity without having to move
- Last ten years innovation was around search. Next ten will be about the transaction itself.
- Younger generations value experiences and are trading square footage for more cash flow