Estate agents and technology

I remember checking the for sale boards and traipsing around local estate agents in the 80s collecting photocopied details and visiting dozens of unsuitable homes.

If you are a similar age to me, you will recall, Rightmove and its competitors were revolutionary. They enabled homebuyers to dream about their next move, and homeowners to watch as their existing home increased in value in one easy place. They could also snoop on their neighbours, and criticise their soft furnishings from the comfort of their own.?

So, it's no surprise that Rupert Murdoch has been trying to buy it (for ￡6.2bn).?Standing between sellers and buyers, Rightmove has made lots of money, mostly from estate agents, for simply providing a platform. For the house buyer, Rightmove is the (80%) market leader with the greatest coverage, and the estate agents have no choice but to play ball.

?But over the past 20 or 30 years, these platforms haven’t really come on. Like many technology companies they spend more on marketing and less on developing the service for the people who actually pay them – home buyers.

?And for many, looking for a home to rent or buy is still frustrating and boring.

?The search function is limited to price, location and number of bedrooms. The platforms don’t allow a customer to indicate exactly what they are looking for to eliminate unsuitable options. This could be things like no more than one hour to our workplaces, near a good secondary school, in a peaceful waterside location, shops you can walk to, free parking, adapted for wheelchair user, close to a teaching hospital, 15-minute drive from the parents, etc. Imagine how personal specifications could open up new locations and possibilities. Like travel sites that now allow you to search by date or price rather than location, it is time Rightmove and its ilk?helped home buyers and renters consider a wider variety of options.

?Really useful information about each home is absent. Market leader Rightmove has an enormous amount of data. Why can't a home buyer compare half a dozen homes based on their personal needs and preferences?? Could sellers share survey and safety certificates? What about it's carbon footprint? When was it designed and built, and by whom? Why can’t we access data like annual heating costs? Crime and noise complaint data? More data about the neighbourhood and its advantages and disadvantages. And how about an end-to-end service that takes through the horrible, time-consuming process of buying and selling real estate (often simultaneously)?

When we designed Open Data Exchange (ODX) we had the customer in mind throughout. And we thought hard about how open data and modern technology could transform the process for social tenants. The social housing sector still has to get to first base - but eventually we want their experience to be like Rightmove, but better.