Failure Is Their Daily Business: U.S. Real Estate Predictions for 2014

Given the recent closure of 2013, which incidentally was a critical transformation year into 2014 in terms of essentially finally getting over the real estate hump, the next 12 months promise to be an encore performance at the very least. That is why, it may be declared the year of the Idiot. If the Chinese name their respective years’ by ID’ing animals, then there’s no reason not to focus on a sub-set of professionals within the real estate mortgage finance industry that make everyone’s job a bit more challenging. Hence, failure is their daily business. And to those savants, it is those real estate naysayers within that industry that will impede and facilitate some of the positive predications that may come to fruition in 2014.

More particularly, here is the punch list: access to residential home loans, user friendly home buying experiences, crowdfunding will be on the rise by financiers, more technology to execute transactions (i.e., expect Glass Google to integrate itself into real estate deals), and robo real estate brokers that will be self-securitized. All of the latter predictions and prophecy from those that have the ability to read the New York Times without moving their lips.

Better Apps for Real Estate Professionals and Consumers

According to Marty Frame, President of Realtors Property Resource, there will be “Better mobile apps for the professional. For all of the elegant, even beautiful, mobile apps for the consumer, there are very few utilities for the real estate practitioner that are anywhere nearly as nice. Our devices have capabilities that professionals need to do their jobs – really good GPS, cameras, microphones, accelerometers – and our industry has a lot of room to grow in terms of design and usability as well.”

The Monetization of Information

To be clear, the monetization of information is nothing new. In fact, it’s likely the second oldest profession in the world. Yet, for the real estate industry, an accelerated pace has occurred in monetizing information, since the advent of manipulating information more smoothly into technology is starting to reach a crescendo. A handful of real estate thought leaders are on the cutting edge of this financial windfall.

Saul Klein, an industry principal, who sells information, believes it is his mission to “Work to give every MLS and association that so desires an opportunity to have a consumer portal their brokers, agents and the public will love, and that will generate revenue for the organizations. [And to] Continue to socialize the concept of protecting, controlling and monetizing MLS data.”

As Klein sees it, the following informational categories will not only generate more income that had not existed before, but will be the hot ticket issues in 2014: Syndication/distribution of MLS data, MLS data licensing, MLS and association public search portals, Off-MLS offerings, Agent ratings, and the public display of sold data.”

Google Glass

Casino moguls hate them, real estate brokers love them. And just when you thought Google Glass might become even more potentially ubiquitous, expect to see the migration of this strange new technology morph its way into real estate transactions. It’s even rumored that the makers of Google Glass are trying to hardwire the spectacles with a ‘BS odometer’, in order to weed out unctuous, greed ridden/self-absorbed real estate agents that constantly Google themselves.

As Dick Greenberg, a principal with Elevation Real Estate noted, “Google Glass of course, is a computer you wear like glasses, with an optical display, a smartphone-type interface and voice commands. IBeacon is a Bluetooth Low Energy system that allows small transmitters to send push notifications to iOS or Android devices, such as Google Glass, in their vicinity.”

As Mr. Greenberg further stated “… when you think about pairing the two of these in an information-sharing environment, very powerful capabilities emerge, and the potential is enormous. As a minor example… a simple transmitter placed on a yard sign could send a video tour of the home, along with full information on the property, all appropriately formatted, to a curious wearer of Google Glass who happened by. But that’s just one tiny tip of the iceberg. I think the efforts to implement something new will be widespread and far-reaching.”

Crowdfunding

Here’s the skinny on crowdfunding. It’s a new age term that beats up on an old age maxim — that you somehow need institutional money to fund real estate investor activity. Wrong. Tembusu Grand