Three Questions with Greg Sax

By Arianna Marino | January 03, 2025

April 2024's From the Lobby Bar issue features “Three Questions” with Greg Sax, the Head of Communications at RESO. This issue is special, because Sax himself runs an online interview series titled “Three Questions” in which he introduces real estate industry players with the goal of humanizing the technology side of the industry. Sax creates a unique mix of personal, professionally relevant, and fun questions in his interviews. In this special feature, we flip the script on Sax and ask him three questions of our own.
 
Q1: From the time you joined RESO in 2019 to now, the organization has grown significantly. Multiple products went from proof of concept to active use, while Web API commitment and conversion numbers skyrocketed from 3.4% committed/converted to 66.8% committed and 46.5% converted. What are some of the challenges you’ve had to overcome to achieve such incredible growth?

Three interesting challenges are success, excitement and marketing. The more we do right, like making the Data Dictionary stronger with each new iteration, making certification more meaningful and transparent with RESO Analytics, and making our ID products like the Universal Property Identifier (UPI) and Unique

 

Organization Identifier (UOI) more foundational, the more expectation there is that we will solve other industry pain points. This makes us excited, because we literally exist to bring order to chaos and to solve the formerly unsolvable. It is a balancing act to temper that excitement to assure that we underpromise and overdeliver with every new initiative that we take on.

 

Marketing new products while maintaining existing products is a world that every business, from SAAS companies to restaurants, knows well. We are a standards organization that thinks like a hungry startup. You don’t want to be too careful, because inertia is what creates problems in the first place. But you have to be ready to remove the shell bits that fall in the pan after you crack those eggs, otherwise your customers will grow to distrust you.

 

Q2: Communicating the value proposition of APIs and data standards to non-technical audiences isn’t for the faint of heart. How did your previous roles with ShowingTime and Minneapolis Area REALTORS® prepare you for this challenge?

Nothing captures attention better than facts delivered in pretty packaging. I used to teach in-person continuing education, and I learned a lot about meaningful message delivery from student feedback…or snoring from the back row.

 

I used to run point for the release of monthly market stats to the local media during the bubble highs and foreclosure lows. Then we produced stats and storylines for other MLS/association communications staffers to talk to their local media. The pace was quick and sometimes confusing to the uninitiated, but the fundamentals of process and outcome were solid and based on facts. Zero fluff.

 

Comparatively, a standard like the Web API is easy in that regard. It’s a fairly straightforward proposition: Use tech that the entire world uses instead of a 20-year-old, unsupported proprietary tech that nobody outside of the industry has heard of. It will make you more innovative, interoperable with others and lightning quick.

 

Follow up question (2B): Is this the hardest concept you’ve had to communicate?

No. Try explaining social media to people who did not grow up with computers.

 

“Why would anyone ever be interested in what I ate for dinner?!”

 

Or try discussing the definitions of price per square foot, days on market and pending sales in 200 unique housing markets at the same time. Do it with an appraiser, MLS director and broker in the same room.

 

Q3: It’s well-known that conference lobby bars drive successful connections in this industry. You are something of a lobby bar master, and hence a man of many connections. How should the uninitiated approach the lobby bar? 

Lobby Bar Master, eh? I’m not sure that I want this title, haha! I’m naturally extroverted and curious, so that helps. I actually like people, which is apparently a novelty in this age of decreased real-life connection.

 

My top tips: stay out of your phone, smile (but don’t be weird about it), join light conversations in progress (but don’t interrupt deep conversations), ask people questions (without worrying about what you want from the conversation), do or participate in something interesting worth talking about (in a conference session or in the host city) before settling in at the lobby bar and never forget the connecting power of geography (where are you based? where are you from? oh, I’ve been there!).

 

How should they break the ice if they see you there?

Start with anything other than real estate.