In closing, while I think fresh ideas and competitors are good in this space, it's going to be tough to convince me that any given upstart site is going to be able to compete for a top spot.

With a complete understanding of a market you will be able to understand the shifts from buyers to sellers and vice versa and act more quickly than your competitors - Big time advantage!

One of my friends who is one of the top producing RE agents in California uses technology extensively, and I'm shocked when he tells me of his competitors that are still using pen and paper to track complex contracts. 

If you can't find enough people to run your business and have to compete for workforce you have to offer more than your competitor. 

I have a couple large competitors in the area, and while those competitors have marketing budgets that reflect the size of their business, I am a lot smaller and more affordable.

We had the same offer as the other competitor, but our offer was to release the escrow funds halfway through (after inspection) the 45 day escrow  to help cover moving/storage for the seller.They denied it for the offer contingent. with their wishes. 

I do think they do a nice job but some of their fees are high for the area (middle TN) their competitors charge 8% of rents for 4 or more units and no premium for repairs but they keep the full first month rent as a leasing fee (in my case $1,000 for the multi family and $1800 for single)  but I don't have a relationship with them.

I'm a newbie here and I came accross vacant land FSBO and he listed a competitor whose selling about the same size land for $23K higher than his.  

So, if people could book it all on one platform, then it might be an additional draw over some of the competitors, and thus more of an intangible value.

I'm sending out DM and am still getting a 2% response rate, while most of my competitors have said they are getting <1%.