Real Estate Community Group and the Web
This page contains a video recording of the presentation made during the session from Breakouts Day 2024, along with a transcript. Video captions and transcript were automatically generated and may not properly translate the speaker's speech. Please use GitHub to suggest corrections.
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Alan Bird - DirectOffer: recording in progress. Alright. Welcome to the real estate community group and the web breakout session for W3C Breakouts Day 2024
… next slide. So we'll briefly go through the introductions of Who's here? And then we're going to talk about. Why are we creating this community group. What's what's the impetus behind that? And then talk about an interesting set of actors. There are new people who want to be involved in this community group. So who they are and what they, what they look like.
… And then we'll talk about what it does for that industry. They are not aware of web standards. They don't tend to use standardization in their solutions today.
… So there's a lot of benefits they can derive. And then we'll talk about a demo of the DirectOffer audio tours, which is a technology that direct offer brings to the table in this space.
… and we'll allow some time at the end for questions and answers. So next slide. So I'm Alan Bird. I'm responsible for industry relations at direct offer.
… After I came to direct offer to help us find some new prospects for this, and I'm also the A/C rep for direct offer. So that's my involvement with W3C After being there for 12 years.
… Amy Chorew. Is that right? Yes.
… Amy is responsible for curated learning and direct offer, and she's been. She's my colleague. Should we doing some of the presentation in abstention is Katie Lappe. Kathleen Lappe is our CEO and founder direct offer many of you met her at the A/C meeting in France a couple of years ago, where we, when we first when direct, offer, first joined W3C And she was enthusiastically talking to people about what we wanted to accomplish.
… and then around the room we have chosen woo from, and whoever might watch this virtually
… so next slide.
… And Amy wants you to tell this story.
Amy Chorew: This is an important story to explain the power of what we've created for the real estate industry.
… Katie or Kathleen Lappe, who is the CEO of direct offer, has many patents and many products. She's in the tech world.
… Her daughter is autistic. Her name is Abby
… and Abby, just graduated college, which is an amazing feat for an autistic autistic woman so proud of her, and Abby wants to buy a house when she started looking at the websites that exist out there. Now.
… They were so overwhelming for her because they do not work for people with autism or any kind of divergence personalities. And
… Katie wanted to fix that. So that was why she started. Do audio tours, and it has has evolved into not only helping websites be ADA compliant, but helping clients like this
… be able to look at websites. But we've also created more flexibility by making a global website, which we will see in just a minute with right now over 20 languages. I will share that my own story, that my husband's Russian, and we sell real estate, and we get clients from Russia all the time. Many of them do not speak English.
… We recently had a young man come into Connecticut, where I live. We were able to use this tool and translate, not just the actual listing, but all the words on the page for the properties that we were going to show him, and it was so effective. The young man and my husband, who's fluent in 5 languages, said, Wow, this translation is right on point. So that got me excited. And that's what got me working with. Do audio tours
Alan Bird - DirectOffer: alright. So why we're why we're why are we creating this community group?
… The industry is constantly creating new platforms for the consumers and professionals and are unaware of value web standards. We've seen this has seen this and other industries, right? A lot of the work that we're doing around media
… happened for that same stimulation is was, was all. The different actors in the industry were building their own infrastructure and and building the same thing in different ways, so they didn't until they came to. They didn't understand that they could work together and standardize those things and make that better.
… We wanna provide a forum for the technical discussions, and to have those track with what's going on in land the areas that come to mind, or things like accessibility, things like multimedia things like the the the multi language support that's going on
… things, things, things that are just part and parcel to all the websites that that exist in the real estate world that could benefit from the standards and make sure that those use cases get taken to the other places. They need to go in so that the problems that it that they find and that they have to be addressed
… and we want to also re educate the real estate industry on how other people are using web technologies.
… The industry tends to be a little bit of a a cocoon, and that they tend to work in their own world, that they don't tend to look outside. but that there are a lot of analogies between the real estate world and other worlds that effects.
… And I think that broadening, that aperture and broadening that discussion would be beneficial to the real estate industry as well as to the rest of the web community.
… and, as I said before, identify the use cases in the requirements for new specifications. We started it as a community group. But it's really not. We don't have technical, specific things in mind that we want to accomplish. Now, rather, we're going to start by having use case and requirement discussions and value discussions. So people can identify what problems they want to solve.
… And we can then get the people from the broader W3C community involved in the discussion, to tell, to tell the real estate industry how we can solve them. Right? So so it's a it's really we think it'll be a very good experience for every W3C. And for the industry as a whole next slide.
Amy Chorew: So the realtor today there's 1.5 million members of the real estate profession called realtors. That is a huge number. So what we're working on here will totally impact this group
… strongly. There is a report that I would will share with anyone who would like it. The National Association of Realtors puts it out. It's called the Member Profile, and it really digs deep into every aspect of the demographics of their finance. How they work, and I think it'll give a better overview of who this client is, so we will be glad to share the report with you all
Alan Bird - DirectOffer: and back at one slide, Amy. So I think one of the interesting things. It's a little bit hard to read, but the number of websites
… is that 66 of those 100 of those 1.5 million realtors have websites. So that's a lot of websites for one industry. And there and all of those are potential places for improvement of making the web better in in general. Okay, go ahead.
Amy Chorew: So these are who we have identified as the potential actors in the group.
… First, there is a myriad of real estate tech developers and providers in every aspect of the real estate transaction.
… Many, many people are creating technology, and they all need to understand this. All of the properties that are for sale in the United States, and many places in the world
… are aggregated into a couple of different sites. In the United States. We call the multiple listing providers, where each State aggregates all the listings from all the different brokers and agents. And then there are search providers that aggregate the whole country. And there are global search providers as well around the world.
… So all of these sites think about it. All of these sites also need this.
… The National Association of Realtors, who are the ones who do all of the governance for real estate practitioners. They need to understand that this and roll out new rules and Regs. So we make sure we're in compliance.
… And then there's many strong groups who also have a large connection with the the public, and some there's many of them. But I just put a couple here the
… the Asian Real Estate Association, which is an amazing group in this United States, the Hispanic group, the Lgbtq plus Real Estate Alliance, and many others. So many groups who have a language, barrier, or opportunity, are also looking to provide more of the standardization that you guys have.
… There's government housing agencies that either work with the financial aspect or the rules and Regs on how we buy and sell real estate, those sites as well.
… There's regional and global resorts, a lot of second home. And of course, resorts which have to do with real estate. A little bit more into Alan's area than mine.
… and then there are existing members who have real estate interest within their organization. Anything to add, Allen.
Alan Bird - DirectOffer: No, I think that's pretty comprehensive list, and and those are. There's obviously no reason it can't expand to cover. you know, the opportunities that may exist for people in, for the, for the industry in China or France, or anywhere. So
… it, it's quite a global opportunity.
Amy Chorew: We're working right now with many international groups. I can get a list. But many of them love what we're doing. And we already have the Ada compliance in our in our technology, which is great.
Alan Bird - DirectOffer: Alright! Next
Amy Chorew: is this, you want me to cover this? Alan, I forget.
… I thought you were going to.
Alan Bird - DirectOffer: Oh, I thought
… it provides in that form. Right? The one thing that we see is great at is gathering community to have discussions
… where it's a vendor, neutral discussion. It's about what do? What do we? What are? What are problems we want to solve in common together? And and the the real estate industry doesn't have that today. For for these types of discussions.
… it increases the use of web of our web standards for infrastructure. They're but for the industry, right? They they don't have to spend the same dollar building the same thing they can. They can work on standardization and then spend their money competing on the value of their sites because it's very competitive market.
… Brokerages within a town are competing against each other for eyeballs.
… and so the more they can do. And the more they the more money they have spent on that, the more they're gonna like it.
… they, they may want to talk to be to other companies, either within industry or that are part of the W. 3 C. Community about
… collaboration. Right? That's one thing we've seen. The has seen over the 35 years it's been in existence is companies find partners like minded partners to work on combined solutions with.
… That, they that they didn't have any way to get to them. This gives them that that avenue.
… And it also brings them a path by by being a community group we.
… with my experience, I'll be able to explain to them. Okay, now that we have this requirement to find, it needs to go to that group, the way to get there is by one of you coming as a member and taking that use case to that group. So it's a defined path. And there's defined structure, and the mechanics of
… proven process will will help that out.
… and it allows the tools to be in one place for for the professional to come to to get the answer. They don't. They no longer have to just go all over the place. They can come to this community group. Help us grow, help us thrive, and and and one of the things that
… that I like that I've seen in over the years are are are the tool, not just the technical tooling, but also the the the use case guides and the best practice guides and things like that
… that have been developed
… the this industry could benefit from seeing those that exist today for things like accessibility, but also built some of our own for how to best look represent a website a real estate property on a website. So that's what this that's that's those are. Some of the benefits of the industry will gain from the community group. Okay, next slide.
Amy Chorew: So let me share with you. What do audio Tours is?
… It's on the screen. A little bit of a little description. It is a technology tool that enhances real estate property listings, using AI generated audio tools and displaying it beautifully
… on a showcase listing page.
… It gives valuable information to consumers. The beautiful thing about audio tours is that a real estate agent will upload their listing into their Mls. Where they all the listings go for that state.
… and they're going to put a description. They're going to put the photos up.
… Our AI 2 automatically takes the pictures and the content, and creates a an audio tour
… that can be translated right now into over 20 languages. And I'm going to do a demo for you in a second.
… One thing to remember, audio is becoming very powerful, especially for the next generation. Consumer podcasts think about it.
… The next generation, which is a very large group of home buyers and home sellers love listening. So we believe we are on the cutting edge. Now, I'm going to actually play the tour.
… but I want to make sure you can hear it. If not, I will have to stop the share and begin it again. So this is a little visual, and what I want to do is click over to this screen. Here, let me find one here, and I'm going to first skip the audio tour and show you what a landing page looks like. So every listing
… has the audio tour, which over here you can see we can change the languages, which I will do in just a little bit, and then we also have close captioning that we can turn off, and on which I'll show you
… if I come down here you'll notice that it has the overview of the property property details. If there's a website for the property, it's here where it's located on a map, and then it's their listing their lead. So what do I mean by that? They can get the lead, and it goes right to them. They don't have to pay anyone to get the lead, which is really beautiful. So let me come back up and let me play the tour for you
… of Los Angeles, California at 0 0 0 Luxury Lane. This breathtaking residence redefines luxury, living
… with its spacious living room that showcases a sleek.
… So you'll notice that the picture just changed to the living room. Can you hear it? Okay, does that make? Can you hear it? Allen? Okay, so what I'm going to do now is, I'm going to show you over here. I can turn close captioning on or off.
… but over here I can also change the language, so should we dare do, mandarin? What do you think? Should we try, mandarin?
… Okay, let's hopefully, it's gonna work. I hope that was good. And then if I go below everything on the landing page. So let me go back and show you the landing page here.
… I'm going to skip the tour, and I'm going to change it to Chinese here.
… mandarin, and you'll notice that I'm gonna stop it. Notice that everything on the page changed to mandarin. So that is the power of working with
… international community. And when people's first language is not English, this has been a very powerful tool. So neuro divergence of people who have autism. People have a hard time looking at all the noise and sound, and the international client who needs to hear the tour in their language.
… So that is what the tour looks like. And on this little slide here. if you scan the QR. Code you can get a copy of the tour and we will make sure we send this to you as well.
… Bottom line the tour has, and excuse me, let me go back to the presentation, so you can see it.
… AI, generated audio. If a listing is not a typical listing, maybe it's commercial or unique. You can manually upload it into the the tool multi-language with captioning that I showed you. Ada. Compliant embraces, DEI and
… the the agent has the ability to share it. Everywhere they have QR codes. They have all social media links.
… and it's just a very nice tool. And we're having great adoption here in the States.
… So that's it. On my side, I'm going to give it back to you
Alan Bird - DirectOffer: have.
… So obviously do. Tours is a product from direct offer.
… But it is using web technologies. It's based on web experiences. It's not an app. It's not a native app that somebody runs. They run it on a web browser. We're getting broad adoption all over the country through a lot of different organizations.
… Katie can't be with us today because she was actually in la talking to another group that wants to look at incorporating the technology into their standards.
… or into their solutions. There are other
… There are other things that need to be done for real, for for realtors. We're we don't, you know. This isn't the end. All answer for everybody, or we wouldn't be here.
… The we want to get the community together, want the support of as a whole. As the engine that drives the the languages increases the languages it it supports.
… Do. Tours will do. Audio tours will have more language support in it.
… you know, we think it's a good
… it. It's not a proof of concept. It's a real solution that's making a real impact on on the market today.
… And we think we think it's a it'll help show the real estate industry. what we what is possible by adopting standards and the needs for 88 compliance and things of that nature.