Real Estate Outsourcing: Pro and Con

What Works? What Doesn't? ... Last week's Dispatch,
C&W Outsources Data Collection to India (Aug 4), generated many skeptical responses. But Bob Verdun with CFI, which provides real estate technology services to Fortune 500 companies, wrote positively about the benefits of outsourcing.

"We have had great success with outsourcing work to India -- under the right circumstances. We have outsourced CAD drawing and other data entry tasks to India. We also have used resources in India for some application development work. It can work very well -- but can also be misleading. From our experience, it works best for repetitive tasks that can be clearly spelled out. If you're not careful, the additional communications, project management and other costs eat up all of the cost savings."

However, Mike Myatt at Pacific Security Capital in Beaverton, OR, doubts that outsourcing increases the quality of research. "Our research group is widely regarded as one of the leading practices in the industry, and we have garnered that reputation by being willing to pay the price for some of the industry’s best talent. Not only are the academic credentials of our staff impressive, but also the fact that they are tenured and experienced 'real estate' professionals who know the market and the players…not just call center staff."

One veteran office broker commented on his problem understanding the accent of an Indian caller. "Time is precious, and I am not going to use mine to educate a researcher, local or foreign, let alone try to decipher the language." He concluded that I should have titled last week's Dispatch "Code Talkers." Oops.

But a few days ago I spent a half hour on the phone with technical support in India, successively diagnosing a network router problem. Yes, it wasn't always easy to understand her. But she was smart and solved the problem. I was happy!

-- Peter Pike