There is a nice opportunity if you can cut out rental brokers and apartment locators, but you really only see these types of brokers in a few markets: Boston, C

There is a nice opportunity if you can cut out rental brokers and apartment locators, but you really only see these types of brokers in a few markets: Boston, Chicago, Miami, NY, and some locators throughout the southern US. People who live in these cities feel like the problem of rental brokers is worse than it actually is. The big opportunity is to disrupt buy/sell-side brokers. Many, many companies have tried, and yet in 2004 when Zillow, Trulia, Redfin, etc. were getting off the ground, about 90% of people in the US used a broker to sell their home. In 2014, it was still 90%. The internet has unchanged the position and power of brokers in the US for a variety of reasons - but a big one that all startups miss is the pain of getting accurate data. In the last decade, the startups that have become ~$1b companies in real estate all support or augment brokers (Zillow, Trulia, Redfin, Costar, Loopnet, etc.) and companies that aim for massive disruption go out of business in a couple years. Sometimes during a gold rush, you are better off selling pick axes to miners.