Mason Maynard rode the real estate crash to a new career — a business in the digital world helping others buy or sell houses.
Maynard was an Atlanta developer looking desperately for the information that every developer, buyer or real estate agent needed to help make decisions in the faltering economy: comprehensive information about what was going on with property sales and values in a neighborhood. Answering those questions could take hours on the ground, a trip to the county courthouse, and a review of real estate websites and multiple listing services.
As a solution, he created a one-stop website, RealValuator.com. It lets anyone check out foreclosures, sales and pre-foreclosures in neighborhoods for free and can provide up-to-date data on what houses sell for. Those willing to pay a fee, mostly real estate agents, can drill deeper into data about metro area neighborhoods.
RealValuator is one of myriad websites and smartphone apps that are becoming an ever bigger part of how people shop for or sell a home. Technology has changed the real estate game, Maynard said.
“It is not only an advance in technology, but there is a sheer disruption in the marketplace,” with the amount of information freely available, he said.
It is altering how real estate agents and home shoppers operate.
Brad Nix, a Cherokee County real estate broker and founder of the RETSO Real Estate Technology Conference, said real estate agents used to be nearly the sole gateway of information for a home shopper.
Today, before a shopper ever meets an agent, he can check out neighborhoods and sales on sites such as Redfin.com and take online video tours to narrow down houses. Apps can give a potential buyer a peek at nearby foreclosures and crime rates or allow him to snap a picture of a QR code on a for sale sign and electronically receive details such as what kind of countertops the home has and what school district it sits in.
“The scary thing that the industry needs to be careful of is that the consumer knows more than the practitioner because of these devices,” Nix said. “Access to data is not the privilege, it is the right of the consumer.”
Still, Nix said, the technology does not replace a good agent who also uses the technology to help shoppers search and who has to carry out the spade work of home access, offers and closings.
That was the experience of Simms Jenkins, founder of BrightWave Marketing in Atlanta. He and his wife relocated last summer and used iPhones and websites to supplement the information their agent was giving them. Jenkins recalled touring one home and using his iPhone to search the Web to find out how much the previous owners paid for the house eight years earlier.
Once back home, they used the Web to get more information on neighborhoods and sort through what they had seen during the day.
“The technology made the process more efficient, and we felt like we were never in the dark in terms of doing research and having insight into the overall search,” he said.
“It is really empowering on many fronts,” Jenkins said, “but you can’t rely on it too much.”
It still takes stepping out of virtual realty and putting some feet on the ground to make a decision.
“It does not replace being priced right and working with a real estate agent and having a house in a desirable location,” Jenkins added.
