Is Real Estate's Next Genius Idea at San Diego's RESO DataComp?

Colleges have given birth to some of the most exciting and innovative startups of our lives today. You know the obvious ones: Page and Brin at Stanford created Google; Zuckerberg with Moskovitz, Saverin, McCollum and Hughes at Harvard created The Facebook; Ferdowski and Houston at MIT created Dropbox; and Michael Dell as a freshman at the University of Texas created PCs Limited (which became Dell). Then there is Reddit (University of Virginia), Snapchat (Stanford), WordPress (University of Houston) and Yahoo! (Stanford again) just to name a few more. In real estate, legend has it that ZipRealty was born in visiting lecturer Brad Inman's class at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley.

At RESO, we want to help give birth to genius ideas to improve real estate. The mission of RESO is to find ways to drive efficiency throughout the real estate industry by creating and promoting the adoption and utilization of standards. So why not reach out to our colleges and universities, as well as the incubators and tech startups even outside our own industry, and bring in fresh ideas and some of the brightest young minds to help us look at how to improve the real estate ecosystem through data standards?

A Data Competition is Born

That's why RESO has created - and is hosting - the 2017 RESO DataComp, sponsored by Realtors Property Resource®. RESO is inviting college and university students, as well as incubators and tech start-ups outside the real estate industry to enter. Teams in the real estate industry can enter too, as it is open to all, but we really want to attract new ideas and fresh perspectives. The incentive: a total of $25,000 in cash prizes is being made available, provided by prize sponsors that include FBS, the creators of Flexmls, and Stratus Data Systems, Inc.

The data competition officially started on September 17 and will officially end with live demonstrations before a distinguished panel of industry judges on Tuesday afternoon, October 17, at the incredible Pendry Hotel in San Diego during the RESO fall conference.

We are looking for anyone who believes they have the next "big idea" that could revolutionize real estate through data integration into the solution. This is a challenge to the freshest minds in the developer community to take our hottest technology standard – the RESO Web API – and push the envelope. Show us how we can improve the real estate industry ecosystem.

DataComp Details

Unlike a "Hackathon" that lasts for hours, the RESO DataComp is a month-long development cycle allowing competitors up to 30 days to create their innovative solution. The entry fee is $25 – which RESO will donate fully to a nonprofit, but even that's optional. Starving students can email RESO and we'll even waive the $25 entry fee. We don't want to create any barriers to entry. We want this competition genuinely to be open to all: from the home hacker to the corporate coder. Now the lawyers require us to share that to enter, you must be a legal U.S. resident and 18 years of age or older at the time of submission. And even though it started on the 17th of September, it's possible to enter the DataComp anytime before October 16th.

You can submit an entry as an individual or as a team, with teams up to a maximum of five individuals. You do have to register and the online registration must be completed by October 16th, 2017 at https://resodatacomp2017.eventbrite.com.

$25,000 Cash Prizes include:

• $10,000 USD for Best Startup
• $5,000 USD for Best Use of Listing Data
• $5,000 USD for Best Use of Non-Listing Data
• $5,000 USD for Crowd Favorite

You can read the official RESO DataComp rules here, but generally, submissions can come from all technology sections, including mobile, web, VR, AR, device, hardware, and drone. The one big requirement: entries must select at least one dataset accessible through RESO Web API Compliant Providers.

Top API Data Providers

We have a lot of great RESO Web API compliant providers stepping up to help us out. Those providing data feeds during the competition will include the RPR-AMP platform, FBS's Spark API platform, California Regional MLS's API platform and Zillow Group's Bridge Interactive platform. Live real-time MLS data will be provided by Sandicor, California Regional MLS, Arizona Regional MLS, Austin Central Texas Realty Information Service and other datasets within the RPR-AMP platform. Participants will also have access to tax data provided through the RPR-AMP and Bridge Interactive platform. Property listing data is a critical component and a requirement to the functionality of the submission.

Fall Conference Registration Information

To register for the RESO fall conference – "Getting Down to Business Utilizing Data Standards" – which is headed for a sellout and is limited to just over 300 people, go online to www.reso.org/fall-mtg.

Jeremy Crawford is CEO of RESO, Real Estate Standards Organization, with more than 700 active members, including NAR, multiple-listing services, real estate associations, brokerages and industry technology providers