Interviews
The RealReports Story: A Conversation with James Rogers of Real Reports
March 27, 2024
By Arianna Marino
James Rogers co-founded RealReports to solve one of the industry’s most significant problems: the reliability and availability of data. Real Reports provides supercharged property reports powered by 30+ top data providers and AI. Real Reports enables agents to meaningfully grow their businesses by winning more listings and generating more leads, as well as helping agents build trust with their clients. Their cutting-edge technology truly delivers a one-of-a-kind solution.
About James Rogers
James has spent his career starting and growing tech startups and running engineering teams across many industries. After graduating early with honors from Tufts University, he started his first company at age 22 and has since built up expertise across the entire startup stack. He brings deep knowledge and experience across engineering, design, product, finance, operations, and management. He has led engineering teams at Endurance International, Happier, and Jana, and has started multiple innovative tech companies from social media to the outdoor industry before moving into real estate tech. After years of personally buying and selling real estate, he co-founded Torii to solve the pains that exist for consumers in the slow-to-innovate, but massive real estate industry. He co-founded RealReports to solve one of the industry’s most significant problems presenting one of the largest opportunities: the reliability and availability of data. James is a licensed real estate broker and avid outdoorsman.
What is the story behind RealReports?
RealReports grew out of our experience building a tech-enabled real estate brokerage for many years and running into the same problem over and over again–real estate data is fragmented, expensive, and time-consuming to access. We felt this pain point whether we were trying to integrate new data sources into our search platform, or when our agents were doing property research and diligence. They would often spend hours tracking down the information they needed.
I experienced the results of this personally when my wife and I had an offer accepted on a house in California, and we were rejected by ten insurance companies for wildfire risk. This was information that we didn’t know, the sellers didn’t know, nor did the agents on either side. Fortunately, we were able to get out of the deal and get our deposit back, but the inaccessibility of real estate data remains a huge issue and has numerous downstream effects that negatively impact consumers and real estate professionals. This is what we’re solving for with RealReports.
The RealReports Product
Tell us about your product and technology.
Our flagship product is called a RealReport, which is like a supercharged “Carfax for homes.” I’m sure many readers have come across this analogy before, but the difference with RealReports is that we’ve actually done it. Where other historical attempts have largely been single data sources or reskinned MLS feeds, RealReports provide everything beyond MLS data for every home in the United States. This includes permits, climate risk, zoning, long and short-term rental potential, remodel potential, and much, much more.
We’ve built a powerful data processing and validation engine that ingests an immense amount of information from 30+ (and growing) real estate data providers. To ensure the highest degree of accuracy, our system self-corrects by continuously ranking the validity and reliability of each of our data sources, so that when you’re seeing the end result, we have a consensus-driven high degree of confidence that we’re showing you the correct answers. We then use that uniquely-accurate data to power the AI that drives RealReports, which we call Aiden. You can ask any question about the property, and it will analyze tens of thousands of data points to give you the right answer in real-time.
How do you differentiate yourselves amidst a crowded PropTech market?
While we’re not the first ones to come up with the idea of a “property report,” RealReports have numerous differentiators that have resulted in significantly higher adoption rates amongst agents compared to other traditional reports. RealReport data is extremely comprehensive, with both a wide breadth of data types that you can’t find anywhere else, but also better coverage and accuracy with redundancy checking.
That said, having data is only as valuable as knowing what to do with it. Our AI copilot empowers agents to get the answers and information they need about a home without having to spend time crunching numbers or pouring through tons of data. Additionally, beyond property research and diligence, RealReports are a powerful lead generation tool. Anytime someone views one of their reports, agents receive real-time lead activity, contact information, and insights (i.e. what questions leads are asking the AI about a property). This allows an agent to identify their most promising leads faster and follow-up with highly-relevant and valuable information.
How heavily has customer feedback influenced the product?
We’ve had the honor of bringing on The Keyes Company, the largest independent brokerage in Florida, as one of our early clients. Wendi Iglesias (CIO at Keyes) has been an incredible champion of RealReports and has collaborated with us very closely. Her deep understanding of the needs of her agents and her vision for integrating technology into their process is extremely rare and has allowed us to rapidly iterate across product features, our business model, and marketing.
In addition, as we’ve begun to work with several MLS’s, we’ve gotten invaluable feedback from executives at all of them. There are countless features and improvements that we were only able to make because of the insights that we’ve gotten from our partners. We’re grateful not only for the opportunity to provide value to their members, but to have access to their institutional knowledge and experience to make RealReports the best that they can be.
What is your approach to customer service and support?
Coming from the brokerage/consumer tech side at our previous company, we are staunch believers in a “do things that don’t scale” approach to customer service and support. Lauren spearheads this effort and is unbelievable. SaaS companies are notorious for being hands on during the sales process, but then leaving you in the lurch once you’ve signed a contract. We want to be as high-touch as our clients will let us, and are constantly doing trainings, webinars, and building new features based on feedback we receive from customers.
The Real Reports Team
Who are the key members of your leadership team?
I’m our CEO and CTO. My co-founder Zach Gorman is our COO and also manages product and marketing. Lauren Locks is our Director of Partnerships and Brian Preston, who we hired in January, is our VP of Growth and leads sales for us now.
How would you describe your company culture?
To be blunt, we work our a**es off, but it’s because we all wake up every day excited to solve the problems that we’re working on. As they say, nothing worth having comes easy. That being said, we give everyone the flexibility and freedom they need to have a fulfilling life outside of work. There is an immense amount of trust between the team, and we all show up for one another no matter what’s going on, both personally and professionally.
What is the company’s biggest achievement to date?
We’ve hit a lot of landmarks that we’re incredibly proud of, but one of the most recent was closing an oversubscribed $2 million seed round amidst one of the most challenging fundraising environments and real estate markets in recent history. The new capital will allow us to significantly accelerate our growth in the coming months, and we’re thrilled to have incredibly engaged and helpful investors like TTV Capital and Moderne Ventures on board.
What are some key lessons learned in scaling your business?
Don’t try to boil the ocean. For early companies, it can be very tempting to try and build a product that can work for everyone out of the gate. With this approach, you inevitably end up with a diluted, “Frankenstein” product which has no real value for anyone. You need to zero in on a very specific customer persona and focus exclusively on their needs, and solve a true pain that they’re already feeling.
Looking Ahead
How do you plan to expand your market presence or product offerings?
We partner with large brokerages, MLSs, and other proptech companies (we recently announced our partnership and integration with MoxiWorks, for instance) to meet agents where they’re at. In terms of expanding product offerings, we’re laser-focused on making RealReports the best, most reliable source of real estate data that has ever existed, so we will continue to concentrate on iterating on that based on feedback we receive from our customers.
What do you see as the biggest challenges in PropTech today? How is your company addressing these challenges?
We’re seeing tidal shifts in the real estate industry, which present two unique challenges to PropTech: first, a correction in the fundraising environment, and second the potential for an upheaval within the brokerage model.
On the former, it’s no secret that the fundraising environment for all startups has been unusually difficult over the past year. Many companies that raised VC money over the last ten years are collapsing under market pressures and overinflated valuations. This led to a significant decrease in the number of funds and total amount raised in 2023. However, in tandem with this market correction is a renewed emphasis on sustainable business models and companies that can remain alive, which I think is incredibly healthy for the startup ecosystem.
On the latter, last November’s Sitzer/Burnett trial verdict and the myriad lawsuits filed since, pose an existential crisis for brokerages nationwide. While it’s still unclear exactly how everything will pan out, agents are facing increased scrutiny from consumers around the value they provide. In response, agents are seeking out new tools and resources to differentiate themselves to clients and remain competitive. RealReports are ideally-positioned to transform how agents build trust with buyers, streamline research, and win more deals.
What impact do you aim to have on the real estate industry?
Our hope is that by making all real estate data universally accessible, we can help modernize our industry, and prevent everyone from dealing with the potentially catastrophic challenges I faced when buying a home.
Does Real Reports have a motto to live by?
Yes, and we have a reminder in Slack about it at noon every day. “Perfect is the greatest enemy of good.”