This year, Lee & Associates plans to break the tech code and integrate meaningful technology into its brokerage service. The technology will help to speedily deliver data to brokers in the field and help create transparency for clients, creating a better overall service, according to Jeff Rinkov, the president and CEO of Lee & Associates. We sat down with Rinkov for an exclusive interview to talk about technology in brokerage and how Lee & Associates is finding the right application for technology in 2018.

GlobeSt.com: How will technology impact commercial real estate brokerage in 2018?

Rinkov: I think that commercial real estate has been really slow to adopt technology, and I think that this is going to be a big year for technology development and adoption. You have seen some examples in the market, like the melding of CoStar and LoopNet and a handful of great technology providers that are coming up with real efficiencies for the industry. Commercial real estate technology has lagged, and we are starting to find the need to use and integrate more technology.

GlobeSt.com: In what way are you planning to integrate technology?

Rinkov: We had a technology panel at our meeting in Vegas, and I asked the panelists why we are so slow to adopt technology and to show me an industry that became an innovator or technology and it changed their industry. They came up with two, and they are interesting but not perfect: insurance and banking. Insurance was really interesting to me because the way that people buy insurance today is so transparent. I think for brokers, they are going to be using more technology, and I think mobile technology is going to be a big deal. Next year is a year where technology developers are reaching the plateau of where their roadmap goes, and they are going to be creating solutions for brokers.

GlobeSt.com: What are some of the problems that you hope technology will solve?

Rinkov: I think most of them are surrounded by the ability for a broker to be mobile and not depend on his assistant or administrative person to aggregate information and send it. We are going to see the phone and tablet duplicate and mimic what happens in the office with all of those resources seamlessly.

GlobeSt.com: Is it more difficult for brokers to transact a deal when there is so much transparency for the client?

Rinkov: We have seen a homogenization of information on the residential side, and I think the residential side has far more transparency than we have. I also think that the residential product type is far more homogenous. The difference between office buildings and retail and industrial is totally different, and you can't draw a straight line between them. It is different. Every commercial space has a story that needs to be told. So, I think that technology is going to help brokers filter that data and target that data, and then I think we are going to be able to use AI to direct people to spaces that will better suit them, especially for retail users.

GlobeSt.com: So technology is actually a way for you to illustrate data to your clients?

Rinkov: I think it is an illustration, a speed of delivery and a method of presentation.

GlobeSt.com: Are you currently investing in technology?

Rinkov: We are currently identifying what that investment is, but we believe that it will be significant. We also believe that—based on the scale of our enterprise—we are going to be able to buy great technology and make affordable and desirous for our agents across the enterprise. We are going to leverage some relationships that we have right now to do that.

GlobeSt.com: How are you planning to approach technology differently than other firms have?

Rinkov: We have seen lots of our competitors go out and try to drive technology through their organizations or what management thought that their brokers could use. We are trying to listen to our team members and we are trying to listen to them about what technologies will provide better client service. A lot of our competitors have spent millions of dollars to develop proprietary CRM, and we are not going to drive a CRM though our organization. We are going to drive delivery tools, property databases and marketing technology as well as things that aid in the speed and delivery of data. We want to make it more accessible and more transparent, and we want to create connectivity. The better connectivity that a broker has with its clients, the more likely that client is to rely on its broker.

Instant Insights /

Technology Is Coming to CRE Brokerage

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