"Real estate doesn't fight change - it rewrites it. Watch what happened with Zillow. Before Zillow, listing data was tightly controlled by brokerages and MLS systems. It was a legitimate moat. A startup comes along and blows that open, suddenly, anyone can see every listing, price history, neighborhood comparables and days on market. From the outside, that looks like disruption. And for a moment, it probably was threatening to some people in the industry."
"Then something interesting happened. Agents figured out that Zillow needed them to work. Listings needed agents. Leads went right back to agents. Zillow started selling Premier Agent packages, and the people who had supposedly been disrupted became Zillow's primary revenue source. What started as a challenge to the commission-driven agent model eventually became one of its biggest marketing channels. That's not a failure of the technology. That's the industry doing what it does."
"The real estate industry is not afraid of new technology. It's actually quite good at it, specifically, at taking new technology and making it work for the existing system instead of against it. This is worth sitting with, because the way most people in proptech talk about real estate suggests a stubborn, backwards industry that keeps losing battles with progress. That framing is wrong, and it leads founders to build the wrong things and pitch the wrong story."
"Disruption becomes real infrastructure faster than you think. AI is in the middle of the same process right now, and it's worth watching carefully because the outcome isn't written yet. There are genuinely impressive tools being deployed in real"
Real estate does not resist change; it incorporates it into the current operating model. New technology can initially appear disruptive by breaking established control points, such as listing data managed by brokerages and MLS systems. Zillow made listing information widely accessible, including prices, comparables, and market history, which looked threatening at first. Agents then found that the platform required their participation, since listings needed agents and leads returned to agents. Zillow monetized this relationship through Premier Agent packages, turning the challenge into a major marketing channel. AI is currently undergoing a similar transition, with tools being deployed while the final outcome remains uncertain.
Read at Entrepreneur
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]