Boston Real Estate Investors Association

Using graduation & reunion season to reform real estate, #Hack4REGood

Using graduation & reunion season to reform real estate, #Hack4REGood

Commencement season brings families and friends together to focus on the future, so when a fellow real estate innovator suggested squeezing in an interview before she leaves town suggested we address three megatrends and a call to action:

Megatrends

1.  After a marathon like effort, real estate consumer advocates have just run their best quarter ever.  That means progress on long-overdue reforms and BILLIONS annually in consumer savings:

http://bit.ly/reMarathon_1Q2019 (share URL on social media)

2.  The battle for the soul of the real estate ecosystem goes beyond fees to rethinking zoning / housing, addressing affordability, and reconnecting neighbors

http://bit.ly/Battle4RESoul (share URL on social media)

3.  Addressing affordable housing means talking about how we share space, see PopUp CoLiving Room at a recent BlockpARTy

http://bit.ly/NextCoLynningRoom_PREVIEW (share URL on social media)

Turning class action into class gifts

Left to itself, the real estate industry is not going to pursue overdue reforms; and left to venture capitalists who want to maximize ROI, startups are not going to deliver $ 30 BILLION annually in consumer savings.  How do we get there?  Real estate consumer advocates need to mobilize a series of events to raise consumer awareness, starting with the Consumer Assembly next week in Washington, DC.  We need to engage Millennials, the current generation of real estate consumers who have a shockingly high rate of buyers remorse — 60-70%.  We have a moral obligation to do better than that, in the language of the Innovation community, we need to hack real estate.  Hack commissions, hack conflicts of interest, hack obsolete zoning — #Hack4REGood.

Is that meaningless rhetoric or a call for action?  Let the past quarter speak for itself — three class action lawsuits, one for conflicts of interest and two for price fixing commissions.  We’d like to challenge new graduates and reunions classes to help real estate consumer advocates / #RE2020 fix the industry by initiating their own class actions — not a lawsuits but campaigns to save money on real estate transactions and donate a portion of those savings to class gifts to their alma maters.

Real Estate Cafe has developed one way to do that, but the stakes are so high we’d like to invite others to participate in an idea competition to #Hack4REGood.  The first step is to encourage their schools to sever ties with existing megabrokers who pose as innovators but routinely engage in conflicts of interest and whose parent corporations are named in class action lawsuits.

Build wealth by multiplying family downpayment gifts

We recognize that tuition burdens are unprecedented and like to offer families who feel overwhelmed by student debt a gift of hope.  Since 1995, Real Estate Cafe has given homebuyers over $ 1 million in commission rebates.  Two families, one from Harvard and the other MIT, have received over $ 200,000 in rebates over multiple transactions.  Sounds like sorcery, but it’s just rewarding smart clients for their self-reliance (or superpowers as portrayed in MIT’s most recent hack in the link below).

http://bit.ly/SorceryREbates (share URL on social media)

Family downpayment gifts are not uncommon, so we’d like to explore ways to reward parents and grandparents by multiplying their generosity.  Want to help us #Hack4REGood?  Read the article above and text #REGiftMultiplier to 617-661-4046 before you leave town.

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