I Moved. Here's What Really Happens.

There is an old saying in real estate: "Life Events Drive Real Estate".

There is another saying in real estate marketing circles, "Zillow owns real estate."

And there is another saying, which is my saying, "Listing portals are pretty weak at everything except these very important things:

a) whats listed right now, and

b) public information about those listings.

You first have to decide

1) to move, and

2) where to move.

...and only then are portals useful.

But deciding to move and where to move are as significant as what to move into. Portals don't help that. Agents help a little bit with that. Web research decides most of how, where, and when to move.

I spend my days speaking with real estate companies and colleagues about using smart consumer data to reach people experiencing major life events. Well, before I decided to move these dramatic things were compounding in my life:

• My family health profile changed.
• My job changed.
• My finances changed.
• My web surfing habits changed.
• My spending habits changed.
• I registered an LLC and launched a business.

Not until all of these things happened did my wife and I decide to move. So I did what everybody does: I downloaded Zillow and Realtor.com apps and start searching for towns and homes like crazy for about six months.

The last thing I did after all these life events occurred was to sell my house and moved to a new house.

And it wasn't fun, fast, or cheap:

1. It took too long when it should not have. I had an offer in five days but it took 4 months to finally move.
2. I spent $10k getting the house ready and another $10k fixing stuff for the buyer. If more sellers realized all this cost, they would probably use a discount brokerage or iBuyer if they could.
3. There are so many agents, that each is a specialist with limited, hyper local expertise, as in, at the town level. So if you are debating 5 towns, you can't find an agent who knows them all. There should be a resource that informs you of all 5.
4. Across two homes, a lot of money was paid to agents. And there were 4 agents involved: around $80,000. It felt like it was worth $20,000 tops.
5. I am now spending a lot of money related to the move, and not on property. I was extremely receptive to: mattresses, home security systems, movers, lawnmowers, chainsaws, home insurance, paint, outdoor furniture, new grill, new couch, home exercise equipment, kitchen appliances and lots of child proofing equipment.

Then I thought a lot about how our advertising company, Audience Town, could help consumers and real estate businesses with all of this friction, in even small ways.

1. I didn't receive a single ad online that was relevant despite the thousands of data signals I put off.
2. After months of deliberating, we decided to list our house. I could have been influenced to sell sooner.
3. Then, I waited months to move. All this time I was actively thinking about new stuff for our new house.

My conclusion is that I could have bought and sold houses faster, with more information, and for tens of thousands of dollars less.