4 tips for real estate software developers

Don't get caught up in customization
BY GAHLORD DEWALD, TUESDAY, MAY 10, 2011.
Inman News™

Real estate is an attractive market for software developers. There are tons of agents so there is a potential volume play for companies who make money selling lots and lots of low-margin stuff. And there are lots of real estate practitioners focused on high-touch service, which creates room for low-volume, high-margin stuff.

And if you don't look very hard, real estate looks like the sort of industry where you solve a problem once and then roll it out nationally. A house is a house is a house, right? And a homebuyer or seller has the same set of goals everywhere, right?

These factors -- lots of potential customers and a market that can scale -- make real estate seem like a great industry to investigate for technology challenges. If you're looking to make it big doing technology for real estate, here are a few things to keep in mind:

1. Don't shortchange your UI (user interface)

There are a lot of problems in the practice of real estate that could be made easier via technology. There are communication problems, document management problems, media asset problems -- all sorts of stuff.

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