Visualizing 8 Years of Real Estate Tech Trends

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I’ve published a lot over the years: 347 research pieces, 48 podcasts, 23 reports & videos – more than 600,000 words. Over the holiday break I built several interactive visualizations of this work for my research library.

Trend Coverage Over Time shows – based on the amount of research I published on certain themes – the rise and fall of major industry trends.

  • iBuying’s rise and fall is clearly seen in the 2020–2022 window, while the importance of agent economics and profitability comes to the fore in 2023 with the radically changing market.
     

  • And in 2025 we see the rapid emergence of Exclusive Inventory alongside the slow and steady rise of the Portal Wars.

The Connection Explorer reveals relationships between companies and themes based on research co-occurrence, and lets you drill into the specific content based on those connections.

What's Heating Up & Cooling Down compares the relative velocity of trends and companies over time. 

  • Over the past year, Exclusive Inventory and the Portal Wars are heating up, while Profitability and iBuying are cooling down.

 
 

The Trend Lifecycle Map shows where major real estate trends (as I’ve defined them in my library) sit in their lifecycle — from emerging concepts to mainstream to decline.

  • This is clearly subjective based on math (number of research pieces over time), but the core idea isn’t wrong.

Remember: these are visualizations of my research library and are not universally comprehensive – they view the trends through my lens.

  • And I’m naturally attracted to the most interesting, fastest-moving topics with big potential.

The bottom line: Knowledge is power, and context imparts knowledge.

  • What’s past is prologue; those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it – pick your quote, but the point is the same: understand the past to navigate the future.
     

  • Often, “most recent” is not the most effective way to learn about a topic; hence my experiments with fun, engaging, and illuminating ways to explore a topic.