Amazon will find the best agents in an area using open data
Amazon is set to use open data to bolster its foray into the real estate sector, and companies looking to partner with the retail giant need to be at the top of their games, according to Greg Dickason, executive general manager of technology for Corelogic. Writing in Financial Review, he said customers using Amazon's Alexa voice-activated assistant to search for houses could be hugely disruptive to the industry, and urged real estate agents to embrace and understand the transformation in order to be a part of it.

This means customers can get quotes and referrals from Amazon for real estate agents just as they get for electricians, plumbers and others.

In the US, this will allow someone to ask their computer device Amazon Echo (Alexa) to make appointments with the top agents in their area. Not using a web site or even a mobile phone, just talking to the device in their home.

With many tens of millions of Echos already in homes in the US, and shortly coming here, customers will literally be able to say: "Alexa, find me good local agents in my area who have sold the most properties like mine at the best prices."

Alexa-type services

And Alexa will send referrals, or set up appointments, using the Amazon marketplace as a reference.

It can do this because it will know a lot about an agent's potential customers and their houses because, as they interact with it, it builds up knowledge about them, and because the world is moving to open data.

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With open data, customers control their own data and enable others to access it, data such as all the transactions they have made from their bank accounts, to their second-by-second electricity usage. And data on the type of properties they own and what repairs and maintenance has been done on them.

As an agent, are you ready for a world where your customers' data enables intelligent services such as Alexa to find them the best service providers? Where the data on you and your performance is open and available to be queried and become part of a conversation your customers are having with a device on their kitchen benchtop?

The way to be ready is to be aware of your strengths, to have data to back up why you are successful, and to engage with these technologies as they arrive so you understand how to work with them, or compete with them as you see fit.

The Amazon marketplace, for example, will need to recruit good agents and will need proof of those agents effectiveness.

Big data models

It will probably hugely reduce the referral fees charged by some of the operators in Australia, but will require agents and agencies to work inside its ecosystem.

Embracing an understanding of what it is, having the data to validate that you are effective, benchmarking yourself against the competition, then marketing yourself on your strengths will prepare you for its arrival.

The same approach will work with other technologies, from big data models that predict who will list and when, to internet of things solutions monitoring properties in real time and allowing for maintenance delivered by local providers, where the property orders the maintenance, not the owner.

Greg Dickason is executive general manager technology for property data company Corelogic