Man, thank you so much for posting this. For a while I have been pondering on a few real estate based ideas, sadly I even half-assed a mobile cms for real estate, collected prospective agents and then let it all go.
Time to get moving!
Why Real Estate Tech Is So Attractive For Founders
61–70 of 119 posts
Re: Why Real Estate Tech Is So Attractive For Founders
#62This 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…
Could not have said this any better myself!
Re: Why Real Estate Tech Is So Attractive For Founders
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
1) "Carwoo for mortgages" I like it. LendingTree is analogous to TrueCar in this situation.
Except in my experience, Carwoo doesn't work (and just ends up like what incision said for #1 above).
Interesting - I wonder if it's your location. I used it a few months ago (I'm in NJ) and it worked great. Price was way under TrueCar, and going into the dealer was horrible. Only downside was I had to drive an hour away to get the car but was in and out in 30 minutes.
Re: Why Real Estate Tech Is So Attractive For Founders
#64This 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…
Something I've said for many years, long before I decided to do my own startup... "Jobs suck. That's why they pay you. If it didn't suck, they wouldn't have to pay you." It's advice I would give the friends of my teenage children, and friends of mine in their 20s who were trying to decide what to do when they grew up (lots of them artists/creatives who were frustrated with poverty).
So if you're doing a startup, the question you need to ask yourself is "Why?". Why not just get a job? It's not hard for smart IT people to get good paying middle class work. A good place to start is Noam Wasserman's question "Rich or King?".
If your goal is to get rich, then think seriously about doing what I'm recommending here, and latching onto a solid, reliable businessperson with good ideas to disrupt an existing business.
Re: Why Real Estate Tech Is So Attractive For Founders
#65I'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…
I have six rental properties as a landlord and I use Bank of America small business accounts which have an email payment system using ACH. The tenant receives an automated email invoice and can pay the invoice by ACH with a few clicks after a one-time setup. I receive an email from the bank when they have paid. It's completely paperless. No other bank was offering this at the time I set it up a few years ago. It's been working great except for the few luddite tenants who can't seem to get the simple setup to work. For them, I have them send a check to a B of A PO box and the bank processes the check for me.
Re: Why Real Estate Tech Is So Attractive For Founders
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I have six rental properties as a landlord and I use Bank of America small business accounts which have an email payment system using ACH. The tenant receives an automated email invoice and can pay the invoice by ACH with a few clicks after a one-time setup. I receive an email from the bank when they have paid. It's completely paperless. No other bank was offering this at the time I set it up a few years ago. It's be…
That's interesting about the payment processing. Does BOFA charge a lot for this?
Do you think it could also work for a property management company collecting HOA fees from a few hundred homes?
Re: Why Real Estate Tech Is So Attractive For Founders
#67Ok, 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…
Check out floored.com. They have an awesome team and their products work with Oculus.
Re: Why Real Estate Tech Is So Attractive For Founders
#68Very true, I'm currently experiencing the same problems. I am a medium size landlord in NY, owning a nice mix of 1-4 family homes, a few mixed use commercial buildings, and an apartment building. I mostly buy homes, renovate, and rent out, but occasionally resell as well.
My technological needs as a landlord are completely unmet with affordable and worthwhile solutions. It is unmet to the point where in the last year I have gone so far as learn html, php, and sql, create my own website with its back end for tenant management and rental payments.
As a property manager, I would gladly partner with a vendor for property management software. But the problem is that a lot of the current worthwhile solutions as geared and priced towards larger property managers... 100+ units. But for a landlord serving around 25 families across 14 properties at the moment, there is not much out there.
This might be a more of a niche market, but there are tons of smaller-medium size landlords out there to make a real market for efficiency products.
If any developers out there are interested in a discussion, let me know.
Re: Why Real Estate Tech Is So Attractive For Founders
#69Why are we reading this article from a nobody? rocket lease is a pretty bad website imo. text-font is unreadable, site is slow. The traffic stats from the site are also abysmal. I have hobby sites that do 100x more traffic. This guy is in no position to offer advice.
http://www.similarweb.com/website/rocketlease.com
Re: Why Real Estate Tech Is So Attractive For Founders
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd suggest adding contact info to your profile and talking about your problems here. Hopefully you'll pique some interest and have some email waiting later.
Contact Info done. Sorry about missing day-one stuff. Since ideas are a dime a dozen: Glassdoor for Apartment Rentals: Tenants give their address and rent amount per month in exchange for access to everyone else's data. Know what other people are actually renting for, not landlord asking rates. Why is there no data on what your neighbor just signed his lease for? Angelist for Real Estate Imgur for Excel Nextdoor for…
You could definitely write some blog posts about these ideas. I think it could be a great way to find technical co-founders willing to contact you about them.
Also, city tech events might be a good place.. such as startup drink and the like. Just going there and listening to ideas.. but being on the looking for opportunities. I.e. Someone is telling how his startup isn't doing that well and might be on the lockout for a new venture.
Imgur for excel doesn't mean that much to me.. What's the context, the problem, the value proposition, the channels, etc.