I would like to address the use of the term “trust” in our industry. It is being used in multiple contexts and is bound to cause confusion. I saw this a same phenomenon play out a couple of years ago around the word “transaction”. In that case, “camps” developed around each context and discussions totally became bogged down. I just want to get ahead of this one.
The most popular context for the word trust is in conjunction with discussion around Digital Rights Management (DRM) or Trust Models. REALTORS® control the rights that others have to their data. Trust is used to describe the relationship between the data owner and the data user. The owner trusts the user and grants them rights to use the data. I have posted thoughts on DRM already, so I won’t bore you.
A close second to the DRM usage is trust used when describing Federated Trust models. This position advocates a single sign-on for Real Estate Applications that eliminates the name/password model in use today. My mind enters a “retro-moment” when I hear this angle because it makes me think of Microsoft Passport. I have not posted on this topic (yet) because I’m waiting for a clear model to be proposed. If it includes a for-profit entity controlling authentication though, I will not be surprised.
Bring up the rear is the use of the word trust as it relates to parallels found in the bank credit card system. Your credit card works at the checkout counter because the entity reading your card trusts your identity. A third party is willing to risk letting you make the purchase. It would seem to me that this approach is easier to achieve than either DRM or Federated Trust. For the sake of argument, let’s call this Digital Identity. Digital Identity allows the physical identity of the user to play in e-commerce transactions.
The anonymous nature of the Internet has always been a problem for business because it was not designed for physical identification. You could always determine the address of the messages (virtual identity), but physical identity a guessing game. This is one of the reasons it is hard to stop plagues like viruses, worms and spam. In spite of these challenges, great strides have been made in the area of e-commerce on the web. In particular, the ability to purchase items with … hey wait a minute … credit cards? Is there a similarity here? I think so.
There would benefits to our industry if we tackle this approach first. And guess what? You will need to establish Physical Identity to make DRM or Federated Trust work anyway. And what about the consumer? They would surely benefit from being elctronically enabled during the home buying process. Digital Identity would surely help them as well. To top it off, let’s start with something standard instead of developing a new standard. For the sake of argument, the X.509 model is already in consumer’s browsers!
Establishing Digital Identity in the Real Estate industry would unleash innovation and creativity in multiple directions at the same time. Let the market decide. Let the approach that provides the most utility to both REALTORS® and consumers win!
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