The Birth of Real Estate Science

Throughout my travels, I have noticed a change. A change residing within the Real Estate Industry. In years past, Real Estate was generally accepted as a "financial" type of industry where economics, finance, and sales concepts and methodologies have ruled.

Enter the Internet and the World Wide Web. All of sudden, Real Estate changed. It had to change because everyone went from using offline tools, calculators and spreadsheets, to using online tools such as Google Apps, the Social Web, and online banking.

Because of these changes, Real Estate was no longer just a "financial" industry, but also a "computer science" industry deeply embedded into the industry. Having realized this, I began researching this phenomenon by reading, listening, and discovering the new ways real estate users (buyers, sellers, agents, consultants, etc.) now do business.

My observations have given way to new research I call:

Real Estate Science: A New Scientific Body of Knowledge and Academic Discipline

A brief explanation and upcoming paper of what Real Estate Science is follows:

The Internet and World Wide Web have been immensely influential components on the Real Estate Industry. From the brokerage enterprise to daily salespersons' activities, computers are involved in every facet of a real estate project or transaction. With millions of mobile devices connected to the Web, the real estate industry has fully embraced the world of computing. Therefore, one can say that the Real Estate Industry has literally transformed itself from a one-dimensional financial industry into a technology dependent juggernaut overnight.

To better understand this evolution, I propose a new discipline and body of knowledge to better understand, analyze, study, and document technology related concepts so we may be able to educate future real estate users along with existing ones. This paper discusses the needs and justifications for a new academic discipline or academic field called Real Estate Science (Re-Sci). Real Estate Science will combine theories and concepts from both the Real Estate Industry and the Computer Science field, respectively. Real world use cases will be used to demonstrate why this new body of knowledge is necessary to implement and move forward into the twenty-first century and beyond.

-- Corey, "the Father of Real Estate Science"

Grant Search Abstract

My grants and contracts course involves the delivery of a research topic paper within the duration of the semester course. Since online grant search was barely discussed in our required readings, I chose the topic title, "Using Advanced Google Search Algorithms for Grant Searching."

Today I submitted the abstract to my professor which follows:

These days nonprofit organizations more than ever need help finding new opportunities in grant funding for their organizations to continue to operate and ultimately complete their mission statements. An obvious choice is searching online. However, developing search criteria such as using relative keywords, including specific sites, or even excluding superfluous search terms can be complex and time consuming process. With this in mind, would nonprofit organizations benefit from developing advanced search algorithms when searching online for new and available grants?

This research project will attempt to answer this question using the Google search engine along with various supporting online tools. Methods for searching and data collection will involve experimenting with order, exclusion, phrases, and other specific Google search parameters. Even though the main key search terms for this research project will be "technology" and "real estate", these terms can be simply replaced with alternative industry terms to satisfy other nonprofit organizations' search requirements. Results from the experimental searches will hopefully provide a clearer picture into the world of grant searching on the Internet using a search engine. Finally, a conclusion will summarize findings along with commentary for using advanced search algorithms by nonprofit organizations when searching for online grant funding.

I look forward to beginning the experimental search algorithms for data collection followed by publishing results for the research paper.

--Corey