by G. Sax, Head of Communications, RESO
Our subject this week is James Rogers, CEO at RealReports. We discussed his past work in brokerage and social media, as well as the importance of user design and interface in building easy-to-understand, successful products. Enjoy!
Q1: Your real estate career began with the tech-enabled real estate brokerage, Torii, which eventually led to you and Zach Gorman cofounding RealReports. Why did someone with a hefty UX/UI and software development background get so into providing housing information? Is it a natural development of finding opportunities in tech or something more?
James: I started Torii because of a bad personal experience buying a home. I was living in Boston when my wife and I decided to buy a vacation house in New Hampshire. We had bought homes before, so we were very familiar with the process.
We started seeing homes with an agent that we’ll call “Dave.” We found one that we liked, and he made it clear that our offer would win. We didn’t, but then we were stuck working with him.
We found another home that we liked, scheduled a showing with Dave and then drove two hours north to see the house. He was nowhere to be found. When I called him, he said he was lost and his dog had thrown up in his car. The listing agent that we met was great, and we bought the house, despite no help from Dave.
When we showed up for our first night in the house, we realized after trying a few light switches that the electricity had been shut off. Thanks for the heads up, Dave! The well, furnace, etc. were also off.
We tried and failed to get the local utility to turn it back on, but “it’s a Saturday, we don’t do that” was all we were told. It was a cold winter night in the mountains, so we bought wood for the fireplace, a propane grill and bottled water, and we slept on a mattress on the floor to stoke the fire overnight and keep the pipes from freezing. Somehow, even in that scenario, Dave still got his full commission.
Soon after that experience, I quit my job as a software engineer to start Torii and to build tech to make the process of buying homes better than what I had just experienced. My longtime friend, Zach Gorman, joined me as a cofounder, and we set off to make change. We were more than a little naive as to how the industry worked, but we got a crash course and took in everything we could about the inner workings of all things real estate.
Fast forward several years, and my wife and I were living in San Francisco. With a baby on the way, we decided to buy a home in San Rafael, but we were rejected by ten insurance companies due to wildfire risk.
I almost lost a massive deposit because I didn’t have the right data at the right time, and that was even as someone with now years of experience in the industry. Zach and I decided that this was such a massive problem that we needed to put all of our efforts into solving it.
Our goal with RealReports is to aggregate every possible piece of real estate data in one place, so that whatever question you have while buying or selling a home, you can easily answer it.
Data in this industry has long been incredibly fragmented. What we’ve done is assembled the deepest and broadest repository of data from a huge number of sources, and then wrapped that into a well-designed, easy-to-use product.
Brokerage was and is a thrilling but challenging and often cutthroat business. One of my favorite parts of my job now is that there are so many incredible people working in our areas of the industry that ultimately support what the agent and the consumer need. Being in this community, specifically the RESO community, amidst like-minded proptech companies and MLSs has been one of the true highlights of my career.
I’ve said it many times before, but a blessing and a curse of the industry is that it’s very hard to get into. But once you’re in, you’re in. All of those amazing people really want to see great products built by genuine people succeed, and it’s such a powerfully collaborative experience if you let it be.
Q2: Continuing the “This is Your Life” theme of your Three Questions, you were involved in a company called Happier, a social network built around positivity and habit-based learning, which sounds marvelous if altruistic at this juncture of social media. In your opinion, what is wrong or right about the landscape of online social interaction today?
James: I often think that I would prefer to have lived life in an era without social media – or maybe even the Internet, for that matter.
One of the reasons I love going to conferences is that real estate, at its core, is an in-person industry, and I’m about as extroverted as one can be. From the ground up, real estate is about interfacing with the people you do business with. There’s no real replacement for face time.
In terms of social media, I’m rarely on any platforms these days, other than maybe LinkedIn for work and Reddit to learn more about various hobbies. In the world we live in now, it’s hard for me to see most social media as a net positive.
As a father of three young boys not yet at the ages where they’d be on social media, it’s something I think about a lot and really hope that we can see meaningful change around this in coming years.
TikTok’s algorithm is designed to keep you on the platform for as long as possible. It doesn’t matter if you like what you are looking at. What matters is that you keep looking at it. From a technological perspective, it’s brilliant, but it’s also fairly insidious. Many of the smartest people of my generation have been working for the past couple of decades just getting people to click on ads, which can sometimes feel like a sad reality.
I think much of the social media space has become something like a technological Stockholm Syndrome, and we can’t seem to break the habit. People might be happier with something that’s easier to use and more focused on positivity than about an algorithm trying to sell you something, but that dopamine drip is hard to escape for most people.
Q3: Your work has often involved visual representation of tech, as is the function of UX/UI. Does that come from a love of geography, charting or another interest?
James: I’ve always loved maps. I have whole parts of my house where historical maps and maps of places that I’ve lived are the primary decorations. For much of my life, I’ve also been a mountaineer and a sailor, and maps are a key part of both of those activities.
Zach and I actually met during our freshman year at Tufts University while volunteering for the wilderness orientation program. We were mountaineering partners for many years before becoming cofounders. We have many times been in literally life-threatening circumstances, so we have a great foundation together to navigate the challenges we regularly face now.
In the context of real estate, so much of the data is about what’s inside the walls, but there is, of course, so much more useful context in the surrounding area. In RealReports, we’ve tried to really marry both in a useful way.
Three Questions is a lighthearted interview series that features real estate industry professionals, their businesses and how they interact with real estate standards.
