[codingdave]

This has been discussed ad nauseum by insiders to the industry for close to 10 years now. Nobody has yet pulled it all together, not for lack of trying, but because of the one major roadblock that you mentioned -- actually going to look at homes. Everything else can be put online, and most of it already is online in one form another, just not always through a single vendor.

I know I'm simply expanding on what you already said, but ... one way or another, you have to go look at a house that you intend to buy. And you don't want the seller there. So you need someone who is trusted by the seller to let you in.

If you can put together a service whereby someone other than real estate agents can do that task, then maybe you could gain traction on everything else.

But I have not talked to anybody who is interested in the work of automating everything else until the problem of physical access to homes is solved, because there isn't money in paperwork. The money in real estate comes from two sources - commissions and mortgages. And most marketing plans depend on reducing commissions, not just redirecting them to a new recipient. So it makes much more business sense to ignore the paperwork that agents normally do, and focus on the mortgage process than the inspection, title, closing process.

After all, that paperwork isn't a pain point for buyers or sellers - they don't do it anyway. The agents do. So the attitude becomes one of, "Who cares if an online service automates the paperwork, when you still needed that agent to open the door? Let the agent go do the paperwork, and at least do some work to earn their stupid commission."

[kanzure]

> I know I'm simply expanding on what you already said, but ... one way or another, you have to go look at a house that you intend to buy. And you don't want the seller there. So you need someone who is trusted by the seller to let you in.

So... I am not familiar with this problem. But what about drones to fly inside and snap pics?

[aggieben]

The problem is not one of physically opening doors. The issue is one of trust. Having drones opening doors instead of an agent doesn't really solve that problem - not to mention that lots of people wouldn't go for that.

[drewmeyers24]

Pretty much every startup is trying to solve trust. If you don't have trust, you ultimately don't have a business. It's a touch nut to crack/scale.

[vitd]

That doesn't tell you things like, "man it smells musty in here. I bet there's a leak somewhere!" or "when I'm downstairs and my spouse is upstairs, the noise when they walk around is unbelievable!"

[gshx]

A lot of the agents typically don't point out any of those things anyway. They're incentivized to make the deal and really paid by the Seller. If both the Buyer and Seller were paying, that might be an altogether different story and it might actually work out better. Having gone through the buying/selling process a few times, I would much rather deal with an unbiased automated system.