Craig Rowe is a seasoned tech columnist and real estate tech reporter for Inman News, with a rich background in publishing, journalism, graphic design, and advertising. His perspective on the topic of "Craig Rowe: tech columnist, real estate investor, outdoor enthusiast" is shaped by his extensive experience and expertise in real estate technology. Rowe is passionate about the intersection of technology and real estate, and he is dedicated to exploring and sharing advancements in this field. He has a keen interest in improving the web structure and design of real estate websites to make them more user-friendly, particularly for finding and contacting agents. Join Bill Risser and Craig Rowe on this episode of The Real Estate Sessions podcast to delve deeper into Rowe's insights and experiences.

(00:02:36) Outdoor Adventures in a Close-Knit Community

(00:09:17) Seizing Opportunities and Following Interests

(00:14:52) The Adventurous Lifestyle of Truckee, California

(00:20:34) Craig Rowe's transformation from freelance writer to tech columnist

(00:28:29) Revolutionizing real estate with alternative finance

(00:35:45) The Burden of Bloated CRM Tech

(00:44:24) Gathering insights for valuable industry content

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Hi, everybody. Welcome to another Real Estate Sessions rewind

episode. This week, we venture back to January of

2022, and we're going to be listening to a

replay of Craig Rowe, the real estate technology reporter

for Inman News. He has a wonderful backstory filled

with some amazing adventures, and I know you're going

to love listening to it. Enjoy.

So what's happening is the industry is learning to

take all of this data, put it in this

little machine, and then pump it out into any

shape or form they want to use. Right. And

they're doing some incredible things with it. There's a

company called Top HAP that I just can't get

enough of because they have these data driven real

estate information maps that can track everything from CO2

levels in the air to the history of a

plot.

You're listening to the Real Estate Sessions podcast. And

I'm your host, Bill Risser, executive Vice President, strategic

Partnerships with RateMyAgent, a digital marketing platform designed to

help great agents harness the power of verified reviews.

For more information, head on over to Ratemyagent.com. Listen

in as I interview industry leaders and get their

stories and journeys to the world of real estate.

Hi, everybody. Welcome to episode 306 of the Real

Estate Sessions podcast. Thank you so much for tuning

in. Thank you so much for telling a friend

today. I'm going to talk to a copywriter, a

journalist, and a backcountry guide. Yes, I'm going to

talk to Craig Rowe. Craig is the property tech

real estate tech reporter for Inman News. I met

Craig at the Inman event this past fall, and

just a neat guy, and what a background. So

we're going to have a lot of fun exploring

some stuff outside of the world of real estate,

and then we're going to talk about how things

work at Inman. It's a very interesting conversation. So

let's get this thing started. Craig, welcome to the

podcast.

Great to be here, Bill. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, we met at the Inman event in Las

Vegas. It was so much fun getting back in

front of people again. And Molly McKinley knows you

well, and it was nice having a conversation. I've

read a lot of your columns. Tech is kind

of my thing.

Thanks.

And it's obviously your thing, and so I appreciate

all the work and the insight and the effort

that goes into those. And we're going to talk

a lot about that and also some more stuff

as well. But I like starting where people grew

up. It's always fun for me to see these

different parts of the country. And for you. It's

upstate New York.

Yeah.

Because first of all, I had no idea where

Caledonia was, but then my first thought was, wait.

Well, there's Rome and Syracuse and Mythica. It's got

to be somewhere in that neighborhood. Now, I'm not

too far off, right?

No, you're not too far off. It is just

south of Rochester.

Okay. Gotcha. So let's talk about that sort of

an upbringing growing up in New York and my

guess know we're going to talk about what you're

doing today. I'm going to assume that a lot

of who you are today was influenced by where

you grew up.

Yes, it absolutely was. Yeah. I loved growing up

in a small town and I am now full

circle right back in a similar location here in

Northern California. But yeah, Caledonia was really neat. It

was definitely a small town. Had a lot of

close friends. I have three older brothers and then

in all our lawns we had all these families

in the neighborhood. Right. And all the backyards met

and the family down the street had six kids

and in the back of us had also like

five or six. So basically there was just this

amalgamation of families all the time and all these

kids of different age groups all the time interacting.

Yeah, it was very Americana for the most part.

This little town really fun. We spent all kinds

of time outdoors. We were very much free range.

Right. You could just open the door at eight

in the morning and I'll come back at eight

at night. That was pretty much it. And in

those hours I could be anywhere from in the

local trout stream, fishing and then at some point

during the day you throw the pole back in

the garage without your parents even knowing and then

you take off again. And I could be riding

my BMX bike for 2 hours and then in

the afternoon we're playing football or Wiffle ball or

baseball or something and that was it. Every day

throughout the summer until winter stopped us from being

able to do that. Kind of know I grew

up in.

San Diego, a little bit different situation. Still had

that ability. Certain when the street lights went on

I had to be home kind of mentality, which

was cool. But that whole connectivity you talk about,

right? Where the neighborhoods it wasn't people going into

a garage and then going in through the service

door to go in the house. Sure. You could

get home and never see anybody if you wanted

to. That wasn't the case for you. Everybody knew

everybody. I love that. We're going to talk about

how much of an outdoorsman you are, so we'll

get to that later. But first let's talk about

as you continue. You end up going to college

locally. You stick around up there and you went

to Nazareth College, I see, right. With you were

an English major, which makes perfect sense because of

what you do for inman. But you're also a

soccer player, so we got to talk about that

for a second.

Sure.

Yeah. First of all, the position in high.

School, I played primarily forward and halfback because I

was fast. I was not your foot skill guy.

I was not beating a lot of people with

a ball. I was fast and aggressive, so I

was getting open. I was running down the opposite

player's. Best guy.

You were tripping people. I mean, tackling people.

Yeah. Thankfully, my college coach kind of recognized that.

And the position I grew into in college was

essentially what someone would call kind of a marking

back where my sole job was to follow around

the other team's best player the entire game. Wow.

And I made an art of it. And I

meant, like, I would follow him to his bench,

and when he stepped off the field, I'd go

back to my field, I would really try and

get into their heads. I had kind of an

aggression issue, so that would often come out on

the field. I led the team in yellow cards

my senior year and got a couple of notable

ones in college. But, yeah, I ultimately just kind

of always relied on being fast in my speed

for the most part. And I think that's what

helped me excel, because, again, I wasn't by any

means the best athlete on the field, but I

was just aggressive and played hard all the time,

and that led to that. But Caledonia was a

football town, actually. It had one of the better

football programs for many years in the state of

New York. Overall, they were always good. So all

the really good athletes played football, and I played

soccer with a few of the other misfits. And

then I ended up at Nazareth, which was a

big lacrosse school and remains a very prominent lacrosse

school also in the country in division three. But

from what I understand in lacrosse, there's not a

big difference between D three and D one. There's

a kind of a fine line. Anyway. Yeah. So

I ended up playing soccer at a lacrosse school.

So we didn't have the best record, but it

was still a lot of fun. Yeah. And I

enjoyed it very much. While I was an English

major, I actually started as an art major.

Interesting.

Yeah. I was always just always creative. I grew

up drawing, but it was the same thing. I

was very inspired by comic books when I was

a kid, so I was drawing and writing all

the time.

So you go to art major, you turn into

an English major. What was your plan? What was

the thought process when you got out of school?

Well, when I got out of high school or

college? Out of college?

Yeah.

As you're entering, no plan. I talk about this

often. I remember being at my girlfriend's apartment the

night I graduated from college, and I just said,

now what? And this goes right to my personality.

Really? I'm not necessarily a planner. I'll just be

frank. I am not really career driven. I'm much

more lifestyle driven. And that kind of surfaced right

when I got out of school. All my friends

were headed off to Grad school, and I honestly

have some regrets about that. I probably should have

gone after an MFA in screenwriting or something, which

is a big love of mine. Or like, magazine

writing or straight into journalism. While I'm the only

inman writer, I think, that does not have a

journalism degree. I am the only one that had

a real estate license. For a while, though, I

was licensed in the industry several times. But anyway,

yeah, I had no real plan. So I ended

up moving down to Florida for a while with

one of my brothers.

And somehow you get involved in real estate. I

believe it happened up in North Carolina, right?

It did, yeah.

So let's talk about going to Raleigh and what

you were doing up there.

Yeah, I think one thing that might be of

interest, though, just to touch on what I did

in Florida, is that's when I got into publishing

in journalism, I had a short stint at the

Orlando Sentinel doing graphic design when print ads when

newspapers were still thick with classifieds. And I was

doing all the design work on these huge, very

expensive auto dealership ads, right, where you're placing the

car image and you're getting down into the five

point type, all that sort of thing. But I

went from there and worked for a magazine company.

Now, this magazine company was attached to a over

the counter penny stock company. You've seen Wolf of

Wall Street, right? Yeah. I was knee deep in

that that environment. So if you remember those scenes

in the movie when they're in this giant bullpen

and all these guys are out on the phone.

Picture me in an office just to the side

of that with one editor, and he and I

were putting together these magazines that were advertising these

stocks. Wow. And even though it was much smaller

and not New York City, that atmosphere was spot

on. Wow. At one point, we went down and

my editor told me not to go. He was

a great guy, and he said, don't do this.

I said, but it just sounds fun. The owner

of our company rented a bunch of limousines, stocked

them full of beer, and then what I learned

later was drugs as well. And we drove down

to Miami, or close to it, to look at

a marina. This boat company that was building these

boats on the way back is when everybody started

to party. I was 23. I was pretty intimidated

by what was going on. By the end of

that car ride, one of the managers, a mid

level guy, had fired everybody in the limos. He

pulled over three times on the Florida turnpike and

made people get out and find their own way

back. I was the only one he was not

in charge of, so he could not fire me.

By the end of the night, like midnight, we're

back in the parking lot, and it's me and

this ravaging, coke addled drunk stockbroker and his girlfriend

just sitting there staring at me because I witnessed

this whole debacle fights inside. It was nuts. And

there I was, the little magazine editor just standing

there. But anyway, that's how I got started in

publishing. That's great.

I can't even imagine.

Someone had died at my stint there. One of

the guys died. He took too much coke and

got in a hot tub and was left alone

and croaked. Yeah, it's terrible. Like, oh, multiple fairs

going on.

So I live in Florida, so you're not painting

the brightest picture of Florida. But that's okay. Nobody

ever does, other than the weather.

Other than that, I have a couple of good

friends in.

Good.

Awesome. Awesome. Yeah.

That kind of makes sense then, because your next

role, you end up being a marketing manager for

a real estate investment firm. So it kind of

makes sense. That's kind of a flow out of

what you were doing down there. Makes sense. Talk

about that.

Yeah, for sure. I went up to Raleigh to

get back together with a girl I had dated

in college I got a job with at the

time was called CB. Richard Ellis. Oh, sure, CBRE,

right. Yeah. Doing marketing for all the tenant reps,

the listing brokers, asset services, those guys. And I

tended to click pretty well with all the brokers,

even though I was young and I was in

this pod with kind of all the other assistants

and stuff. I had some good marketing ideas. Now,

back then, a good marketing idea was an animated

PowerPoint. I mean, they just loved it. They couldn't

get enough. Then I started doing some work in

a software product called Flash by Macro Media, and

it animated stuff you could publish on the web.

And I was just making listing presentations and marketing

materials, and people loved that. And then I got

recruited to this team for CB's website. Their website,

Rollout, was basically they had this master site, and

then each office would have their own templates to

populate with content. And I got this little side

gig where I was going around to the different

offices, helping them get up to speed with their

website. So I would come into an office in

Charlote or Nashville, Richmond, and help them get their

website up to speed. So that's kind of how

I got into the technology end of real estate.

So then I would interview the agents and talk

to them about what was good and what they

should put on the site and what kind of

content they should use, all that kind of stuff.

Yeah, I did early work with Costar as well

wow. When they were physically walking around office buildings

recording space.

Wow. Somehow we have to get you to a

little town in California called Truckee.

Sure.

And for people that don't know, well, I can

see you with the way we record this podcast.

I can see you. You can see me behind

you. I see snowboards. I see maybe a sled.

There's some great stuff that tells me a lot

about where you live.

Yeah. So truckee. Yeah. My wife and I for

years were traveling from the East Coast out west

to hike and backpack and all the national parks

and all that sort of thing. And having grown

up camping all the time. Because where else do

parents take four boys? You can't take them on

a civilized vacation. You have to take them into

the wilderness and hope they come back. Awesome. Yeah.

So it was always kind of ingrained in me.

So we ended up first in Las Vegas prior

to here, prior to Truckee. And that's when I

started doing my guide work, working as a backpacking

guide, taking people on trips in the Grand Canyon

and other parts of southern Utah in the Southwest.

But Vegas is not I don't love it as

a place to live. The town has a number

of great assets and things going for it, but

it was not for us. So we wanted a

small town. Again, I was very fortunate. My wife

is pretty well regarded in the world of college

counseling and consulting in private schools. So she was

recruited to a number of different mountain towns in

the west jackson, Aspen, Vale, all these other places.

But we ended up in Truckee for a number

of reasons. A, it had great access to water

at the time. It was more affordable than some

of these other places. And just Lake Tahoe in

general, like, this is just a pretty fantastic place

to live. The summers are unbeatable, and then the

winters, of course, typically are a heck of a

lot of fun because the entire town, the entire

kind of vibe of everybody is always to get

on the mountain. Right. Everything is about the snow

and then when it's going to happen. Some of

the most fun times for me is this build

up of a big storm coming like we just

had over Christmas. It was just fantastic. And I

just love that. I love that excitement. I become

a kid again back in New York. Can't wait

to get out and go sledding in the winter.

And I get distracted. I have a hard time

working when I know there's good snow out there.

That needs to be mean. I'm very much like

a child. Like, before the end of the school

year or something, waiting for summer. I just get

distracted by it and it becomes kind of all

encompassing. Yeah. And again, Truckee being a small town,

you get to know a lot of people quickly.

You see them on the hill, you see them

in the I do some stuff in the backcountry

as well, some split. Just it's fun. There's a

ton of Olympians and current pro athletes that are

always around, and you never know who you're going

to be sitting with. I have a local bartender

that can do double backflips off cliffs. I have

a good friend who's dating a four time Olympian.

I love all this connection to outdoor sports and

adventure recreation and everything. It's really fun.

You're still doing your guiding, right? Backcountry guiding and

that sort of talk about that. The typical client,

it's not going to be a guy like me

who doesn't camp. I would think it's probably somebody

who's a little more in tune with nature, maybe

more than actually.

Well, you'd be surprised a little of both. I

think the common client is someone who wants to

experience some outdoors but doesn't really know where to

begin, or they don't want to get into it

full on. They don't want to go buy a

bunch of equipment because they know they're only going

to do it once or twice every few years.

So they hire people like us to take them

out. And the company I work for, they provide

all the gear and we prepare all the food

for them, and they get the permits right. They

have a whole team dedicated to getting permits in

these parks, in these remote places. It is a

lot of fun. That is, quite frankly, the most

rewarding work that I do is if you take

someone who's never camped or hiked significantly, and, for

example, you hike them for five days across the

Grand Canyon. Now it's on corridor trails, so very

well marked, like backcountry campsites. But they're developed. They're

dedicated sites, and they have pit toilets. So technically

it's backcountry, it's wilderness, but it's a little more

developed. But even so, for some people, that is

an immense experience. And taking someone who's never done

that and something they don't even believe they can

do, they're so scared and nervous about the hike

and sleeping outside and all this sort of thing,

and the reward that they feel. And to know

that you had a role in helping them get

through all these emotional hurdles and all this fear

and experience, all this enjoyment, it's extremely fun and

rewarding. I've had a lot of incredible experiences and

gotten to know a lot of cool people from

guiding them around different places in the woods.

You're the only guest out of 306 guests, Craig,

that we've had this conversation with. That's awesome. Thank

you for bringing it to the get down. Let's

get to the real estate. You know, we talked

about the fact, I would guess the tech columnist,

right, for inman. And first of, how did that

come up? How did you connect with Brad, or

was it someone else at the time that you

connected with?

I connected with Amber Toufin, who at the time

was the editor. I was, again, just a freelance

writer at the time. In 2009, I went out

on my own, and I was working for real

estate agents and different companies. But I actually always

read inman because I was in real estate. I

just was always on it and I just emailed

them about being a contributor, someone who writes for

free, right. As a way for me to potentially

get more real estate business. Right. However, when Amber

saw my background, she said, look, we're actually looking

for somebody that understands technology and can be a

regular paid contributor. So, yeah, as a freelance writer,

a standard regular gig is awesome. Right. So you're

not scraping to find to get pitches accepted and

all that sort of thing. So I did a

couple demo columns and then obviously she showed it

to Brad. He liked it. I was very grateful.

That's how it started. It started out as one

wait, no, okay. It started out as one a

week quickly went to one a day.

Oh, boy.

Yeah. It's very hard to sustain because you're going

to run now and in 20, 15, 16 there

just weren't that many yet. Right? There weren't that

many new companies coming up as there are in

the last few years now. But still, every day

was really hard to do a demo, think about

my views on it, compare and contrast it to

other products out there. But then we kind of

found a really good balance. And I really liked

the atmosphere. I liked everyone I worked with inman

that's one of the big reasons I very much

enjoy it and stick around is because I've always

had good people to work with. Editorial team is

and I'm a very vocal advocate for journalism, and

they are, and it's why I love working with

all these other journalists is I learn a ton.

Not just about I think I bring a lot

of real estate knowledge to Inman, but learning about

principles of journalism, why things are published, why they're

not, why certain things need to be edited. I

love that. It gets me very excited, very fired

up. I love these our Connect events because it's

one of the few times where the Inman team

just to give some people how it works if

they want it. We sit in a room during

these Connect events. We sit in a room around

a table. All of us are writing. And then

these discussions will erupt about anything from a word

we should use or not use. And we'll debate

for five minutes about whether we should use that

word or not, or how to quote something correctly

or should we use that person's comments. I love

those conversations and I love hashing that stuff out.

So, yeah, I guess ultimately that's kind of how

I came into Inman. I continue to do other

freelance projects on the side. I have other clients,

so to speak. But Inman, yeah, is my primary

workload each day, and I still love it. It's

a lot of fun. I've gotten to know a

lot of great people, seen some really cool products,

seen some duds.

We're going to talk about that. Yeah, people that

know me know. I am a massive fan of

the I wish I could write something that compels

people to take action. That's such a powerful thing

to be able to do. Well, Lauren Walker has

been a guest on this show. In fact, she

has my favorite Twitter handle of all time, and

it's at insert copy here. There's no better Twitter

handle.

I didn't know that, but that doesn't surprise me

at all. She is very bright. That is great.

Yeah.

So it's very cool. I love the fact that

the journalistic integrity of the company you work for

matters. And however, there are a lot of I

don't want to say anti inman, but a lot

of people think Brad's just trying to rock the

boat or he's just saying stuff to make stuff.

Those do those work together? Or how do you

handle that?

No, I think Brad sees the role of journalism

as to shake things up because that's where the

last bastion of truth lives, societally speaking. And Brad

is not afraid to call out the industry he

serves for its drawbacks, which I think is great,

and I support that fully. I talk a lot

about issues that the industry has overall, whether it's

with technology. I have a big problem with the

way agents come in, are trained in the industry,

how the low barrier of entry, and if there's

a reason why something's not working, look inward. And

Brad is not afraid to do that. Right. He's

not afraid to rock the boat, as you said.

I support that fully. But you can rock the

boat honestly in a forthright manner and still be

very and be journalistic about it. Just saying something

that people don't agree with doesn't mean that's a

bias. Right. Okay. Not leaning one way or another

if you're just saying, look, this is your problem.

Like right now, it's not my beat, but if

I was writing regularly about the mortgage industry, I

would tear it down. It is the most single

most broken financial vertical in our country. The customer

experience is shattered. It needs to be torn down

and rebuilt from scratch. Again, that's not my beat,

but that is honest. I think a journalist can

say that and not be biased in any way,

shape or and I'm because me being a columnist

and me being technically a contractor withinman. So I

am at arm's length from a lot of this

stuff. I sometimes will jump into the comments when

someone is calling out Inman's journalistic integrity, if it's

something they think, we're always on the take with

Compass or Zillow and it's all nonsense. It's because

they're newsmakers. The big issue is people don't understand

what news is. They think if they don't agree

with it, then it's biased against what they don't

agree with. Right. And that's not the case. We

talk about Zillow a lot because they shook up

the industry. They came charging in and did something

totally different. The same thing with Compass, right?

Yeah, you're right. You're absolutely right.

Yeah. People need to understand what news. I would

love it if they just asked if a commenter

just asked, Why are you writing about this? And

whoever, we can say why they do it, especially

if someone tries to call out like, Andrea man,

don't do that first off sound. Yes, you're right.

I think all our writers are great. I agree.

You're coming up on like seven years or so.

I'm working with them. And let's talk about the

different tech sectors a little bit. I don't know

if this is something you can identify, but is

there one tech sector right now that's just like

taking all of your energy or a big chunk

of your energy because it's just exploding or outpacing

the rest of the field?

Well, obviously, yeah, the showing technology stuff, everyone's scrambling

to fill that niche, and only a couple have

done it. Right. And I think there's a reason

why they have. So, yeah, showing tech stuff is

really building up quickly. But on top of that,

on a bigger scale, that's kind of a smaller

niche within the industry, but on a larger scale,

it's obviously alternative finance. It's the companies like NOC

and Divi and Landing, these companies that are providing

unique ways for people to buy and sell homes,

whether it's rent to own, buy before you sell.

All these alternative financing companies out there, I don't

love that some of them are positioning themselves as

technology companies. I think that's a lot of Wall

Street stuff, to be honest. Like, they're doing it

to be in the prop tech circle. But what

they technically, legally are is a mortgage company right

now. I don't blame them for that. They have

to do what's best for their company. Right. But

some of the positioning annoys me a bit. A

lot of them are using I guess I should

backtrack a little. A lot of them are using

technology internally to make their processes more efficient. And

at the same time, while I was complaining about

the antiquated mortgage industry, these alternative companies coming up,

they're coming at it from an entirely different angle.

They know how to use technology internally, whether it's

something as simple as a team project software like

a Trello or an Asana or Basecamp, just to

manage internal processes. That's way more than what bank

of America is doing or Chase or any of

that. So, yeah. So alternative finance, these different ownership

structures, they're cranking up quickly. Our mortgage reporter, Matt

has a ton of stuff to be writing about

these days. Yeah.

Is there something relatively new, like just popping up

on the scene that's piqued your interest, we'll say?

Well, I think it's not a specific it's hard

to classify, but the use of real estate data.

So the way that companies are is it the

best way I can describe it is do you

remember that old toy that. Playdoh had, where you

could just put a shape on the end of

a little like a compressor. You put the Play

DOH in, you can put a different shape on

the front and press it through, and it would

come out in the shape of a star or

like spaghetti, right? Yes. So what's happening is the

industry is learning to take all of this data,

put it in this little machine, and then pump

it out into any shape or form they want

to use, right. And they're doing some incredible things

with it. There's a company called Top HAP that

I just can't get enough of because they have

these data driven real estate information maps that can

track everything from CO2 levels in the air to

the history of a plot you're about to buy.

You can look at these heat maps, and it

shows you, based on price and square footage and

everything exactly where a neighborhood is moving. Now, those

are valuable tools for real estate agents because they

can look at that and go, okay, I'm going

to focus on this market that in eight months,

everything's going to push into this area. In eight

months, I'm going to start targeting them. So when

that little community is ready to pop, I'm going

to be there.

That feels a lot like what commercial brokers have

done forever manually. Right? Because it's all about identifying

opportunities in a big way for investors and principals

and things. But now that's being brought to the

residential sector, that's pretty cool.

I have a story that can relate to that.

When I was at CBRE a long time ago,

I had a buddy who was the assistant to

the land broker, and all the land broker told

him to do for months was go to the

zoning office, get plot maps, and then drive around

the city. This was in Raleigh, North Carolina. Drive

around the city and look at all those empty

lots, and then look at it on the map.

Just park next to it. Get out and look

at it. Look at it on the he did

that for months, and that's how he understood everything

that was going on with these properties. What's coming

near it? Is it going to be zoned retail?

Is it mixed use? And all this information now

is available on our phones and on these apps.

It's incredible. There's a company out of New York

City called Marketproof that is doing the same thing,

but essentially with high rises in New York City.

And their data sets are incredible. And they're not

just presenting it in some boring Excel. It's just

beautiful visualizations and charts and graphs and stacking plans

and the ability to make all this beautiful data

digestible and have it be able to communicate messages

is you can take all this information and give

it to somebody who's visual like me. I'm not

a numbers guy. I can't do math. But when

you show me all these presentations that are all

really cool. I think that's incredibly powerful. Heck, man,

if they manage to turn some of this data

on the if they put it in the that's

why I want agents to adopt this quickly because

if this stuff gets into the consumer market consumers

are already incredibly educated. They don't yet know how

to steer the ship. They're on the ocean and

they got their boat and they're at the helm,

but they need someone to navigate. But man, some

of the data products that are coming out now,

they're impressive and they're fun to watch. I love

looking at them. I'm a visual guy. I have

maps all in front of me and that's what

I see when I look at these products. These

are just market information maps, man. I don't want

to see another five paragraph written market report and

I'm a writer. Show me some cool heat maps

and graphs and then just a little bit of

a piggyback on that. In terms of some other

specific software that is a presentation software is emerging

as important and I think it's really cool. Like

the guys at Agent Image have access inside real

estate. Bought Dash CMA and turned it into Core

Present, which is really cool. And Mark Choi out

of San Francisco built highnote, which is a terrific

presentation tool. There's more out there and I think

those are powerful tools, ways that you can present

yourself and your company online easily to clients is

really cool stuff.

I'll put you on the spot. Sure. Because it's

fun talking to a journalist. I can ask you

a tough question because it's acceptable, right? What's the

most overrated real estate tech?

Do you want a specific name?

I don't want to name a name.

Yeah, sure. CRM Tech.

Okay. Overrated.

It's overrated because what they've done to it industry

wide, they've gone from its core task, which is

to help people manage their contacts, right? Help them

understand who to reach out to when. And they've

put on top of all that, all these additional

tools. Now, all the automations and marketing automations, some

of them have built in content automation, advertising, Facebook

advertising, all these other tools. Now as a product

like, it's really well done, it's great software. It's

built, it's stable, it looks good, but it's it's

I think it's bogging down agents. Now you have

put me on the spot, but I've written about

this, so this should be a surprise to no

one. There's just a lot of feature bloat out

there. Nothing is niche or specific really anymore. Nothing

is lightweight. It's all just big, bulky, enterprise focused

software. Now that's okay when you're marketing directly to

brokers, and brokers want a big product that can

support multiple offices.

They want that end to end solution. How many

times you heard that in the last years?

Right now that's great, but they're putting this big.

But the broker buys this, spends a ton of

money on it. They have to, then. Now, they're

not responsible for the day to day training, but

they sure as heck need to make sure that

the agents are using the product they just spent

a bunch of money on. I would like to

see big software products like that, modularized, like can

I take? I just want to buy this, right?

Like, this is cool. I want to buy your

Landing Page product. My clients, my agents. All for

some reason, they like salesforce. Whatever. Salesforce is extremely

proven product. Obviously. They like salesforce. Great. But Chime,

you have a very cool landing page. KVCore. You

guys have cool listing marketing products? I want to

just be able to take little chunks of this

and maybe they can negotiate. Mean, I don't know

the direct in and out sales practices of those

companies, but I'd like to see stuff more scaled

down and lightweight. Right. Because not every needs all

of those tools. CRM is important. Like the verb

is important. Customer relationship. I guess the noun customer

relationship. Management. But managing your clients right? That's important.

But you don't need and that's, I think, what

leads a lot of agents to seek other products.

Why? They get shiny object syndrome. They don't have

time to adopt all these other products.

The very worst thing you can ask an agent

to do is say something like, okay, we need

you to clean up your database. It's not a

good thing. It's a very ugly reaction. Trust Me.

Craig, let's go back to immin for a second.

I'd love to the process of deciding what you're

going to ride on. Are you submitting things to

them and they pick and choose. Is it reversed

or are you kind of a freewheeling?

It.

Whatever you want to do.

How does that work? It's probably 50 50 or

maybe probably 60 40. I guess now because I've

been doing it a while and my name is

kind of out there. Companies will pitch me and

they'll say, hey, do you want to look at

our product? Right. And the vast majority of those

are all worthy of being written about and reviewed.

So I'll simply tell my editor, yeah, here's what

I'm writing about. Here are the products I'm writing

about. This week or each day we check in

on slack. Here's what I'm reviewing this week. Sometimes

they'll say, hey, we heard about this product. Can

you write about it? Sure. So they'll often send

things my way, and I contribute to a lot

of the general. Like if we have theme months,

they'll ask, hey, do you have any products that

help people market their listings or that promote agents?

Because we're doing Agent Appreciation month. Yeah, so there's

a bit of that. And then I contribute. Like

if I have an idea, I'll just ask my

editor about it. And normally I am totally supported.

It's pretty rare that they say no. Don't write

about that. Like I just did one recently. The

eleven alternatives to showing time. They'll suggest that to

me and then I'll track down the companies to

put in there and write about. Yeah, so it's

a little of both.

Wave a magic wand. You now have the developing

skills of the best developers in the world. What

would you create? What's missing in the world of

real estate? Putting a tech guy on the spot?

Yeah, I honestly, honestly don't know. I think everything

is filled in. I would make some things better.

I would develop a tool somehow that gives brokers

a reason to have one single controllable website that

eliminates the need. I have a big problem with

the web structure, generally speaking, in the industry, and

this really came into fruition recently when we're doing

this concerted effort to track down a bunch of

top agents and get some questions from them. But

I would develop a tool and I would use

all those developers to make the absolute best top

down website design product. And I would find a

way to make sure every agent's site is consistent,

easy to find, easy to contact, easy to reach

out, because that is a major problem in the

industry. That is way overlooked, is how difficult it

is to find an agent. You can Google an

agent and you'll probably come up with them, but

that site you land on might be some random

corporate page from like whatever, it's a Century 21

page. Then you got to go find that local

office.

Right?

Then maybe that person was on a team last

year. They're not on that team anymore. But their

bio on that team page still exists. Then they

have their own vanity URL over there with their

own name under some totally different it's just their

name. Right. And then in the bottom it'll say,

proudly affiliated with Century 21. It is so broken.

It is really bad out there. And yes, I

would try and invent something that just can totally

streamline that process. Eliminates all these redundant online presences

that these agents and offices have. That's a solid,

really good website tool. Top down. That's pretty cliche

too. Top down.

Yeah, we're saying that a lot. That's okay.

Yeah.

Craig, I've had you here way over time. I

appreciate this.

This has been great.

Well, let me ask you the same question I've

asked every single guest going back to Jay Thompson.

I think you've met Jay.

Yeah, he works.

Yep. So that's right. Every Wednesday. For what? What

one piece of advice would you give a new

agent just starting in the business?

Time kills deals. Yes. And that was taught to

me when I was my last full time job

was when I was selling and marketing multifamily property.

Every delay is one more nail in the coffin

of a deal. Deals have to get done quicker

the longer they run out. Man, the ODS increase

really quickly of it going south. Yeah, time kills

deals. And then, I guess another thing I often

say, too, is there's getting the business and then

doing the right. Right. But, yeah, I think overall,

time kills deals.

Craig, if someone wants to reach out to you,

what's the best way for them to do that?

Craig@copyandcontententententententgroup.com but I'm also for any that's just kind

of generally speaking, if they want to chat about

something, but obviously Craig@inman.com, for any reviews or ideas

they have for stories, I love to hear it.

Love to hear from people. The more industry feedback

and people's ideas we can get, the better. So,

yeah. Craig@inman.com well, Craig, thank you so much.

For the time today. I'm very happy for you

because I know there's a lot of snow waiting

for you right outside your door. Right?

Yeah. Don't try and reach me this weekend.

Thanks again for all your time. I appreciate it.

Yeah. Thank you, Bill.

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