New MoxiWorks CEO poised to disrupt real estate tech 

As the industry continues to deal with the disruption of commissions lawsuits and settlements, the new CEO at a key real estate tech company is making plans for some disruption of his own.

Eric Elfman, who joined MoxiWorks as CEO in early June, told Real Estate News that many vendors have become "fat, dumb and happy" operating in the old world of real estate technology, and that needs to change — particularly given the rapid growth of artificial intelligence.

"A lot of vendors were caught flat-footed… when OpenAI and generative AI really boomed onto the market. And so you have vendors that are jumping to use the marketing speak, and then you have vendors I think like Moxi who are taking a more pragmatic approach," Elfman said.

For MoxiWorks, that approach means rethinking the economics for brokerages and agents who will be adjusting to new ways of doing business following NAR's $418 million settlement. 

It also means developing a new generation of its platform, which is expected to launch at the end of the year and be widely available next summer.

"We are getting back to customer-centricity in the short term and writing a new platform that understands the new reality for agents in what we believe to be a uniquely innovative way," Elfman said. 

What is that new reality? One in which "buy-side commissions are clearly up in the air, listings are what is most important, and there are less listings — so agents have to be more competitive to win them. That means work smart and use technology."

Bringing a startup perspective to proptech

Elfman's background is in the fast-moving tech startup space — a different world from much of the real estate industry, which has a reputation for moving slowly when it comes to new technology. For the past 25 years, he has led companies that he also founded, and he wants to bring that same entrepreneurial drive to MoxiWorks, pushing it in an industry he says is "ripe for disruption."

"I view all the main players, MoxiWorks included, as totally disruptable," Elfman said. "It happens as most B2B companies mature — there is less innovation, more customers bring more support and roadmap challenges, and the focus on profitability goes against innovation and the same customer-centricity that made that company what they were to begin with."

Using AI to surface untapped data

From his perspective as an industry outsider, Elfman said real estate lags behind other content-rich markets.

"I think a lot of proptech companies have a huge amount of data that is virtually untapped for optimization with AI. MoxiWorks is in that camp," Elfman said. "We are hiring data scientists to begin crawling through our data to figure out where the best, highest value, earliest use of AI will be for us."

"What you won't see from MoxiWorks is marketing-speak about AI with no teeth. We will announce our strategy when we have something meaningful for the market. It all starts with analysis," Elfman said.

Ready to take on competitors

Along with building a next-generation platform, Elfman said he wants the company to be focused only on making things that help agents of any size brokerage land listings.

"If MoxiWorks were a factory, the single widget that we produce is a listing for an agent," Elfman said. "Our intention is to focus everything we do on helping our agent users find, win and close more listings."

That also means taking on competitors to win market share.

"We know there is some hollow rebranding going on in this market, and we will not get sucked into a battle of words. We intend to open a new front of advanced capabilities against our large, established competitors and all the younger companies trying to disrupt them," Elfman said.