A time for new stories
AI upends real estate, pushing agents, MLSs and proptech to reinvent roles, narratives and value as new tech reshapes home marketing and sales.
A cosmic hand has slapped down on the card table holding the real estate industry chessboard.
Whap!
Pieces everywhere.
A strategic reset building for years is at hand, creating excitement, fear and massive opportunity, all at once, at 10x speed.
Questions that seemed speculative and/or insane just months ago are now pressing:
What exactly is an MLS?
What does vibe coding mean for proptech?
If one-size-fits-all marketing for homes really is toast, who will emerge with the most compelling home marketing system?
How do human agents position themselves relative to the AI agent most clients will soon be using?
Reality is changing. How you explain yourself to the world must change too.
New stories
Capital, talent, agility and the transformative force of AI will drive a lot of outcomes in this new reality. But those outcomes will take flight in the form of new stories. Because however human AI becomes, we remain, well ... human. We make sense of things through stories. They carry us to action, and rationalize actions once they are taken.
It has long been clear that the residential real estate industry could use some new stories. But this is no longer optional.
Our annual event, Signal, takes place just a couple months from now in Denver. We're focusing heavily on this imperative — this opportunity — in our workshops and sessions. Because, honestly, it's time to start from scratch.
Consider that:
99% of listing presentations, the vehicle through which our industry tells a seller how a home gets sold, are 100% the same. Meanwhile, the model for how, when and under what terms listings are distributed is changing daily. Those PowerPoint slides may as well be stone tablets.
MLSs that survived the removal of cooperative compensation (long believed to be the foundational block in their figurative Jenga tower) now face listings flow routed around them.
Real estate SaaS companies that managed the tension between scale and customization for years must now reposition themselves to a market full of DIY-ers.
Brokers who have blended brand, tech, training, comp and culture in various combinations as their value mix to agents now have an opportunity to create an entirely new blend.
We're going to unpack all of it on stage, shaping ideas into concrete deliverables, new research into narratives and our pervasive industry noise into a signal.
Signal takes place June 2-4 in Denver. Get more information and tickets here.