VRM vertical: real estate

Bill Wendell of Real Estate Cafe poses a good Idea Starter question: What if homebuyers and sellers managed their own data? Sez Bill, Here are ten of our favorites ideas about how to retool the real estate industry with VRM.  What are yours? He actually provides more than ten. Here’s a sample:

5.  Buyers will be able to sign into open houses, and transfer their buyer profile or homesearchID by “bumping” their smart phone.  (See comments received / Discuss)

6.  Fourth parties, like locally initiated homebuyer club, will aggregate and deliver savings to buyers and sellers.  (See comments received / Discuss)

10.  Buyers will be able to manage and release their listing clickstreams so sellers, including distressed sellers, auctioneers, and leanders or government agencies with foreclosures, can invite them to bid on properties.  (See comments received / Discuss)

15.  Fourth parties will develop platforms to certify trust worthiness of real estate professionals based on terms of service, eg. No conflicts of interest because brokerage prohibits dual agency.  (See comments received / Discuss)

18.  Geoloco apps, augmented reality, and smartphones / mobile devices will enable real estate consumers to connect at hyperlocal level and engage in meaningful conversations that translate into more informed decisions and savings opportunities.  (See comments received / Discuss)

20.  eGov will embrace VRM tools, particularly homebuyerIDs, to reduce paperwork and help make sense of morass of competing housing program guidelines.  (See comments received / Discuss)

These are also in the reVRM Minifesto.

And Bill is tweeting with the hashtag #reVRM.

Also dig the CRM+VRM 2010 workshop tomorrow (where Bill and many other VRooMers and CRooMers will be). That hashtag is #vrmcrm2010.

We’re filling up

Our VRM+CRM workshop, exactly two weeks away, is filling up. We have about 70 people signed up so far, and if we get too many more we may be spilling out of our spaces.

So, if you care about VRM development, and how it matches up with what’s happening on the CRM side, register soon. (Click on the image to the left.) Right now we’re especially interested in companies that already do CRM or use CRM systems, and are dealing with real CRM problems. (And are looking for real opportunities opened by the operation of VRM on the customers’ side. But if you’re just interested and can contribute, that’s cool too.

Check out EnThinnai

Rao Aswath, a technologist and telecom industry veteran of long standing, has been working on EnThinnai, which he describes as a VRM tool and more. He runs down a list of VRM principles (in some detail), and concludes,

It is apparent that EnThinnai meets almost all of the principles set forward for VRM. The way EnThinnai is setup, no single entity can have a dominant control. Since we use OpenID and third party authorization, artificial network effect is removed. The whole Internet could be part of every individual customer’s network.

Check it out and see what you think.