Malcom Gladwell, Water, and Real-Tech
We do practically everything online, from planning our next business trip to booking airline tickets, accommodations, and cars. We buy our closets online and fill it with apparel bought in the same way. Our home appliances, furniture, and even the art we decorate our homes with all come directly from the wonderful World Wide Web. The days of brick and mortar economics are long gone. We trust people whom we’ve never met to actually take our car for the weekend and sleep in our beds when we’re away, trusting they’ll be in good hands and waiting for our return.
So how come when it comes to actual brick and mortar, buying or selling our home, we still rely on the middle man? And why are we still willing to pay thousands of dollars to do so? There are two main reasons:
- It’s a huge decision and we feel more confident when someone experienced leads the way.
- We seek a personal human relationship with someone who will talk through our hesitations.
Ironically enough, we put this cardinal step in the hands of a potentially experienced person, but one that has an inherited conflict of interest embedded in their revenue model.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for that human connection. It’s the most meaningful aspect of our life, and what we lack most in the “virtuality” we live in. However, the real connection we seek is with the person with whom we’re closing the deal. That is where the real magic happens. They know best about their property, the neighbors, where to get good coffee, and what school to send your kids to.
So why is the time of real-tech now? Are we really at a point in time where we can buy a house with just a tap of a finger?
Malcolm Gladwell called it the tipping point, the critical mass that has to be reached in order to move from ‘nothing is happening’ to ‘it’s all happening’.
A good way to understand it, is through nature. For any chemical reaction to happen a certain amount of initial energy needs to be attained, this is the Activation Energy. Let’s take water for example. In order for Hydrogen and Oxygen molecules to become water, energy accumulates while there are no visible results. At a sudden moment, the activation energy reaches the necessary level and a cascade reaction begins to transform the separate molecules into H2O.
Going back to Real Estate, three major events in the last decade have brought us to that sacred tipping point:
- Technology — Has evolved exponentially in the past few years. Our every step is supported, in some way by the motherly care of technology.
- Consumer behavior — We, especially Millennials, who were born holding an iPhone, do everything online. If giving our credit card details seemed insane a few years back, we now feel secure housing it in the databases of e-commerce sites.
- Shared Economy — is best of both worlds. We can enjoy both a personal connection and have the verification of a third party at the same time.
Substantial time and energy has been invested into these three fields, enough to initiate the transformation of the Real Estate into Real-Tech.
When provided with the right tools and backed by a trustworthy venture, selling & buying your home can be done peer-2-peer with just a swipe of a finger.
Writen in February 2016 for TechCrunch
