In another edition of “How Real Estate is Different” we discover that the lingo and metrics of this space are not things that people outside the industry encounter often. somehow something simple like building a data collection front end becomes a messy endeavor.
Have you ever tried to explain rentable square feet to a software developer? I have. It’s not easy. Prepare yourself for an hour of incredulous stares, attempted restatements that don’t hit the mark, and best of all the conversation ending statement of “if you say so, I guess….”
Try to then get that developer to build the front end to get you what you need with the right data model. Luckily I can do data models so we eventually fought through that roadblock but the rest. Oy. Somehow though it has worked and after a year we not only have great development but someone who is beginning to understand real estate. That’s value!
So what’s the point? If you want to build something new in this space, be prepared to do some training. Serious training. Time consuming, painstaking, iterative training.