Why would HousingWire take months to painstakingly compile a list of 50 special real estate technology firms?
Are these companies the only ones worth this recognition, this hat tip? Well, that is not the way to view this list.
We expect some firms who sent in nominations to be upset to learn they did not make the list. Some of those firms sent in nominations so personal, it can only be a painful mark to not be included. For that, we regret any hard feelings.
The RETech:50 list is a compilation of worthy tools developed to aid in the selling of real estate. Did it leave out other companies that do this? Well, considering all real estate companies look to aid the selling of homes, yes.
In viewing all of the transaction management tools, for example, Benutech, Cartavi, dotloop and Reesio bear mention and recognition for one reason or another. It is not meant as a comment (or lack thereof) on the important activities of all the hard workers at Ucloser, planetRE, Instanet or NuOffer. The editorial staff is aware of these firms and what they do. Quite simply, we would love to list the hundreds of real estate tech companies. We can’t.
But we can give some attention to those firms that grabbed our eye.
In the list, traditional brokerages are absent. There is no reference to RE/MAX, Coldwell Banker, Keller Williams or other real estate firms. These are great companies, to be sure, but HousingWire was looking to highlight technological innovation in the home sales market.
Therefore, tools that aid the ability to place real estate agents with borrowers (agent discovery) and firms employing search tools for similar reasons get proportionately high favor on this list.
And it’s because borrowers are largely absent from the paperwork process on the real estate side — remember we aren’t talking mortgages here — that efforts to alleviate this strain are not on the list. E-signature platforms and e-form providers were not included for this reason.
Firms that can help agents with their communications are on the list. Real estate agents and brokers may not even know that videos of their listings can be embedded into their emails. But they can be, and a firm doing just that is noted in the following pages.
All this brings us to a further point: Where will HousingWire go from here?
Further recognition for some of the great companies nominated for the list but not in the final cut is a decent starting point. Companies providing mortgage loan origination software, for example, will be reconsidered at a future time. There is no need to resubmit; we are keeping every nomination form on file and will auto-advance them to the next HousingWire list that relates to that sector.
The same goes for valuation services. Because appraisal technology doesn’t reflect a consumer-facing tech product, it was not included in this inaugural RETech:50.
Watch this space: There will be more to come from HousingWire to recognize future technology advances in other housing sectors.
The RETech:50 reporting team members are still nursing a set of numb elbows after whittling down the list of nominations to our top 50 and poring over the winning entries. We’re now braced for the next round of deliberations. Nominate away!
