21–30 of 119 posts
I would add that with tablets and smart phones, it is now possible to bring your apps on the fields. A few year ago, it was very difficult to bring your computer on a construction site. Some startups (for instance Aproplan http://www.aproplan.com ) are already jumping on these new possibilities.
Buying and selling real estate is up there with the most miserable experiences I have dealt with as an adult. I think there is definitely a lot of room to make a lot of change, improve people's lives significantly, and make a lot of money. But I think it will be much harder than you realize. 1. Regulations: this is a HIGHLY regulated industry. Anything that is regulated doesn't have any motivation to improve, because…
Some interesting companies in the residential home sales game are trying to streamline the process. Off the top of my head, paperless pipeline & dotloop are both trying to reduce the paper volume.
there was also a brandery.org (cincy incubator) company in the last cycle that was doing something similar.
I would add that with tablets and smart phones, it is now possible to bring your apps on the fields. A few year ago, it was very difficult to bring your computer on a construction site. Some startups (for instance Aproplan http://www.aproplan.com ) are already jumping on these new possibilities.
Pardon? Rugged computers (like business Thinkpads and Toughbooks) have existed for far more than a decade. I would more readily take such a thing to a construction site than an iDevice or an Android tablet.
I can't count the number of tech people I've heard say they want to create a website that will get rid of the horrible broker system of renting apartments in NYC. But that requires convincing landlords to do something different, and so far they have had zero financial incentive to do so, since it's the landlord who uses the broker, but the renter who has to pay the cost of the broker.
So ten years goes by, and still you usually have to go through the ridiculous process of paying brokers.
I'd be interested in hearing concrete ideas we can do today. Apartment search just doesn't strike me as a viable new startup. Am I wrong?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Aggregation. Aggregate services. Guy who made padmapper.com just aggregated all listings from various sites.
Padmapper is really awesome. I think one of the reasons it were so successful was that it gave an alternate (better) UI for apartment search. People are visual and they know maps, but seeing lists is harder to parse. The fact that nobody else at that time had put apartment search on a map is a great example of how low the bar is for excellence in this space (no offense, @padmapper).
I'm pretty sure that housingmaps did it earlier. However, padmapper provided a much nicer experience.
I'd be interested in hearing concrete ideas we can do today. Apartment search just doesn't strike me as a viable new startup. Am I wrong?
Online rent payment. Rent and taxes are my only regular expenses that aren't automatically deducted from my credit card or bank account. And even the IRS accepts online (albeit manual) payments. In fact, rent is the only reason I have a paper checkbook at all. It's an easy win on both sides. In exchange for letting me schedule automatic payments, my landlord could get much more timely payments. I think I'm reasonably…
Buying and selling real estate is up there with the most miserable experiences I have dealt with as an adult. I think there is definitely a lot of room to make a lot of change, improve people's lives significantly, and make a lot of money. But I think it will be much harder than you realize. 1. Regulations: this is a HIGHLY regulated industry. Anything that is regulated doesn't have any motivation to improve, because…
Use the Oculus Rift to let potential buyers and renters take a virtual tour of properties.
Think how much time is currently wasted driving between properties. And many people probably end up with non-optimal purchases since they can only reasonably visit Is there some kind of 3D scanning equipment that would let my potential startup create a virtual environment by walking through a house with it? I guess there might be a technology gap there. Anyone know?