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Why Real Estate Tech Is So Attractive For Founders

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Re: Why Real Estate Tech Is So Attractive For Founders

#31

Post by hkmurakami »

jwoah12 wrote: post #13
mrfusion wrote: post #2

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?

Personally, having moved twice so far in the crazy, corrupt rental market of Manhattan, I've been dying for someone to solve this problem. For those who aren't familiar with renting an apartment in NYC, the turnover is so fast and vacancy so low, that you can only start looking for apartments the month before you want to move. In addition, the landscape is filled with predatory brokers that add no value to the proces…

The situation obviously sucks for tenants, but do the owners have any incentive to invite change, given the current supply demand situation and the fact that they are able to pass on 100% of the cost to tenants?

Re: Why Real Estate Tech Is So Attractive For Founders

#32

Post by incision »

mrfusion wrote: post #2

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?

1.) Kill LendingTree by creating a service that actually lives up to their slogan "When banks compete, you win". In reality, signing up with LendingTree will just get you aggressively harassed by "Boiler Room" salesmen offering terms worse than whichever bank holds your checking account.

2.) Anything to simplify / make comprehensible the mountain of paperwork that accompanies every transaction around mortgages.

3.) Online payment services for rent, HOA fees and whatnot that aren't painful to use. As a rule, the existing services for this are expensive, ugly and dangerously unreliable.

4.) Home / Apartment search that does more than just dump information on you.

The typical search offers little more than a price range and a zipcode.

I want to be able to provide your search with info about what I do for a living, how old my kids are perhaps a few things that are important to me and get recommendations that consider all of these things.

I don't need to be told about the options in the places I know about it. I need it to reveal the ones I haven't considered.

Re: Why Real Estate Tech Is So Attractive For Founders

#33

Post by jamiequint »

mrfusion wrote: post #29

Ok, here's a real estate start up idea I just had. (BTW I'd actually be interested in working on this, so contact me if you're interested in joining forces.) 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 ther…

Matterport (YC Company) - http://matterport.com/

Re: Why Real Estate Tech Is So Attractive For Founders

#34

Post by agentultra »

Handling the paperwork in a secure, regulation-friendly way would go a long way to improving the experience of purchasing property.

I was surprised that my realtor, lawyer and mortgage broker all asked me to email sensitive financial information without any encryption and believed that a signature on a piece of paper is better than the cryptographic alternatives available today (which they don't even know about).

Especially with all of the intelligence-community BS that gets involved in the process today! I was flabberghasted that my lawyers office had no idea what an encryption key is. "Oh just email those bank statements over," they'd say. "No thanks," I replied, "I'll hand them to you myself."

And what a pain in the ass. I don't get paid to courier all that paperwork around.

And they have no idea. Think your insurance information is safe? I'd be surprised. These people just email sensitive documents around in the open. It's crazy.

Re: Why Real Estate Tech Is So Attractive For Founders

#35

Post by encoderer »

mrfusion wrote: post #29

Ok, here's a real estate start up idea I just had. (BTW I'd actually be interested in working on this, so contact me if you're interested in joining forces.) 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 ther…

As a buyer, first: I saw way more than 10 homes. Way more. Buying a home is a process that usually takes months. You see a lot of homes in that time (if you want to).

Second, there is just no substitute for the real thing IMO. The best you could do with a virtual tour is disqualify homes.

Re: Why Real Estate Tech Is So Attractive For Founders

#36

Post by fleitz »

beat wrote: post #8

This is a classic case of where the kinds of technical founders that cruise HN shouldn't be trying to invent their own thing, but rather find a boring "business" subject matter expert as a co-founder. There are lots and lots of these things, where businesspeople see a gap that can be solved by tech but don't have the skills to do it. My advice to all the kids out of college who want to be startup founders - don't try…

Yeah, it's the Dirty Jobs of tech, fuck what's cool, do what pays the bills.

The best part about doing what pays is that the next generation of college kids are trying to disrupt Facebook (Snapchat/IG, God I'm getting old), rather than fuck with your massively profitable app doing lead gen for mortgage origination, that no one outside of your outside sales team has ever heard of, nor do you have to deal with whether VCs like your biz plan, and you don't have to give up equity because you can actually pay your fucking employees and they don't even cost that much because what you're doing isn't exactly rocket science.

The future is not evenly distributed, drive 100 miles from the coast and it's 1979. Go inside any office park and it's 1985.

Btw, this is why I LOVE the idea of FarmLogs, those guys are going to make a killing IMHO.

Re: Why Real Estate Tech Is So Attractive For Founders

#37

Post by jimnatel »

simoncion wrote: post #23
jimnatel wrote: post #12

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.

> A few year ago, it was very difficult to bring your computer on a construction site. 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.

Yes, of course, you could bring your computer but it is not at all the same to carry an heavy computer or to have a smart phone in your pocket. For instance, you can use your phone or your tablet all along the site during a handover to take notes and pictures. It is a lot more difficult to do that with a computer

Re: Why Real Estate Tech Is So Attractive For Founders

#38

Post by [deleted] »

beat wrote: post #8

This is a classic case of where the kinds of technical founders that cruise HN shouldn't be trying to invent their own thing, but rather find a boring "business" subject matter expert as a co-founder. There are lots and lots of these things, where businesspeople see a gap that can be solved by tech but don't have the skills to do it. My advice to all the kids out of college who want to be startup founders - don't try…

[deleted]

Re: Why Real Estate Tech Is So Attractive For Founders

#39

Post by spokenn »

mrfusion wrote: post #2

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?

A hardware/software solution that improves the current notary journal by adding location data, biometric identification & backups. Right now, title company notaries go through multiple journals a year and journals have been lost.

Re: Why Real Estate Tech Is So Attractive For Founders

#40

Post by nitroscott »

incision wrote: post #32
mrfusion wrote: post #2

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?

1.) Kill LendingTree by creating a service that actually lives up to their slogan "When banks compete, you win". In reality, signing up with LendingTree will just get you aggressively harassed by "Boiler Room" salesmen offering terms worse than whichever bank holds your checking account. 2.) Anything to simplify / make comprehensible the mountain of paperwork that accompanies every transaction around mortgages. 3.) O…

1) "Carwoo for mortgages" I like it. LendingTree is analogous to TrueCar in this situation.
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