MoxiWorks Refutes Compass' Claims Regarding Technology and Market Share

Wow, just saw this and HAD to comment. It's rare that we see brokers go at each other so publicly about their competitive claims, but I have to say this letter is pretty interesting.

The real estate industry is rife with hyperbole and marketing claims. Our industry's preference of opinion over fact is one of the main reasons I started a research practice within WAV Group. The birth of business intelligence is allowing brokerages new ways to substantiate or refute claims like the article from MoxiWorks. Moxiworks is using MLS data married with business intelligence tools to refute claims that, in the past, would have been difficult to prove or disprove.

It's great to see a well-established brand push back against new players that love to throw the long-standing brands in real estate under the bus because it plays well in their recruiting pitches. I totally agree with York that brokers have LONG had technologists and agents in the same company. My partner, David Gumpper, is a great example of that. He served as CTO of Michael Saunders and Company and managed an in-house development team for nearly 20 years. In fact, if you look at the Top 500 Brokers on the Real Trends list, at least 250 of them have their own CTOs that manage development efforts, from my calculations.

Don't get me wrong – I love an exciting news angle as much as the next guy, as long as they are based in fact and not marketing fiction. It's time that every broker only make claims that can be proven, where the data is readily accessible for others to substantiate.

I hope York Baur's article will act as a wake-up call to any brokerage, technology company and consulting firm that claims to be the best, biggest or brightest without any data to back up their claim of greatness. We have competitors that do the same thing in the consulting space – they claim to do more research than anyone else or claim to be the most well-respected. I would love to see the data that backs up those claims, too.

To be fair, I have to ask York Baur to tell us his sources of the data he uses to negate the claims made by Compass. We need to know how you calculate the 245 day retention number, for example, and how you calculate Compass' market share at .7 percent and not 5 percent. Fair is fair here – every data point needs to be substantiated to make an article relevant, in my view.

I think MoxiWorks may have just started the real estate industry's version of a #metoo movement. We may start to see tons of articles refuting the myriad of "#1" statements we see in our industry. If you're going to make a claim, tell us how you came up with that stat or simply stop talking!

Here's the original letter referenced above.

To view the original article, visit the WAV Group blog.