83% of Brokerages Added New Tech in 2 Years. Did It Actually Help?
83% of brokerages added new tools in two years. Only 28% say tech drives productivity. Here is the disconnect.
In the 2023 State of Real Estate Brokerage Technology Survey, we partnered with T3 Sixty and surveyed 92 leaders from over 100 of the top brokerages in the United States. One finding stood out: 83% of brokerages rolled out at least one new technology tool in the prior two years. More than 16% added five or more.
That is a lot of buying. A lot of onboarding. A lot of internal announcements about new tools that are going to change the way the office runs.
But when we asked those same leaders whether technology actually drives productivity at their brokerage, only 28% said yes.
So what happened to the other 55%?
The rollout numbers
Here is exactly what respondents told us about how many new tools they had rolled out in the previous two years:
| New tools added | % of respondents |
|---|---|
| None | 17.39% |
| 1 | 16.30% |
| 2 | 21.74% |
| 3 | 13.04% |
| 4 | 11.96% |
| 5 | 3.26% |
| Greater than 5 | 16.30% |
Only about one in six brokerages sat still. Everyone else was buying. And the biggest single group, at nearly 22%, added two new tools. That means most brokerages were going through multiple vendor evaluations, multiple implementations, and multiple rounds of agent training in a two-year window.
What brokerages actually said about their technology
When we asked how leaders view their current technology, the answers were honest:
- 39.13% said technology is integral to operating their business
- 28.26% said it drives productivity
- 16.30% said it simply checks a box
- 7.61% said it is a unique differentiator
Read that third line again. More than one in six brokerages said their technology does nothing meaningful. It exists because somebody decided they needed it, and now it just sits there.
And the “integral” category is worth questioning too. Integral does not mean effective. Plenty of tools become integral because you built workflows around them years ago and now you are stuck. That is not the same as a tool that actually makes your operation better. For more on this dynamic, see our breakdown of the full survey results.
The real problem is reactive buying
Brokerages do not usually add tools because of a technology strategy. They add them because something breaks or someone complains. An agent cannot get signatures done fast enough, so you buy an e-signature tool. Compliance reviews are taking too long, so you add a document management system. A competitor starts talking about their new platform, so you go find one too.
Each purchase makes sense in isolation. But after a few rounds of this, you have five or six tools that were never designed to work together, each with its own login, its own data, and its own way of doing things. The average brokerage in our survey uses 20.4 tools. Most brokerages only pay for five or fewer directly. The rest come from agents and teams filling gaps on their own.
That is not a tech stack. That is a pile.
What reactive buying actually costs you
Every disconnected tool creates drag. Not the kind you see on an invoice. The kind that shows up in how long things take, how many mistakes get made, and how much your staff has to babysit processes that should run themselves.
Think about what happens when a transaction closes. Someone enters data into the transaction management system. Someone else re-enters it into accounting. A third person calculates the commission split in a spreadsheet. A fourth person checks compliance documents in yet another system. Each handoff is a chance for something to go wrong, and each tool involved has its own version of the truth.
Multiply that by every transaction your brokerage processes in a year. That is the cost of fragmented systems. It is not one dramatic failure. It is a slow, steady bleed of time and accuracy that compounds month after month.
We covered this pattern in detail in How the Right Tech Stack Boosts Brokerage Performance.
The tools brokerages said work best
When we asked which tools respondents found most effective, the answers were telling. CRM platforms, KvCore, MLS tools, DotLoop, marketing tools, Follow Up Boss, websites, and DocuSign came up repeatedly.
Notice something about that list. Almost every tool on it does one thing. CRM handles contacts. DotLoop handles documents. DocuSign handles signatures. Each one is a point solution that solves a specific problem well.
The issue is not that these tools are bad. They are not. The issue is that none of them talk to each other in a way that gives the broker a clear picture of the whole operation. You can love DotLoop for documents and still have no idea what your actual commission exposure looks like this quarter. You can rely on your CRM every day and still not know which office is the most profitable.
Point solutions solve point problems. They do not solve the operational visibility problem that brokerages actually need answered.
Adding tools versus consolidating operations
There is a difference between adding another tool and adding a platform. A tool does one job. A platform connects jobs so they work as a single operation. When you are evaluating new technology, the first question should not be “does this solve the problem?” It should be “does this create another silo?”
Because if it does, you are trading one problem for two. You fixed the immediate pain, but you added another login, another data source that does not sync with the rest, and another thing your staff has to manage. Our guide on evaluating real estate brokerage software vendors covers how to think through this before you buy.
The brokerages in our survey that reported the best outcomes from technology were not the ones with the most tools. They were the ones that had connected what they already had into fewer systems with better visibility. Consolidation beat accumulation every time.
What a platform approach looks like
TotalBrokerage was built for this exact problem. It is a back-office operating system that handles transactions, commissions, compliance, reporting, and agent management in one place. Not a point solution that does one thing. A platform that replaces the pile of disconnected tools your back office runs on today.
When a transaction comes in, it flows through compliance workflows, commission calculations, and accounting without anyone re-entering data or switching systems. The broker can see what every agent, office, and deal is producing at any point. Commissions are calculated correctly because the system has the actual deal data, not a number someone typed into a spreadsheet.
That is not adding another tool to the stack. That is replacing five or six of them with something that was designed to work as one system. You keep your CRM. You keep your marketing tools. TotalBrokerage handles the operational backbone.
For a closer look at how technology strategy differs from technology accumulation and what the productivity gap actually looks like in practice, we go deeper in the related posts from this survey series.
Before you buy the next tool
If your brokerage is about to roll out another new technology product, take a step back. Ask whether you are solving a problem or just adding to the pile. Ask whether the new tool will connect to your existing systems or create another silo. And ask whether what you really need is not one more tool but fewer tools that actually work together.
Understanding what to expect after buying and the risks of vendor lock-in will save you from repeating the same cycle.
The survey data is clear. Brokerages are not short on technology. They are short on connection. And that is a solvable problem.
If you want to see what consolidating your back office into a single system of record looks like, book a demo with TotalBrokerage.
FAQ
Why did 83% of brokerages add new technology but only 28% say it drives productivity?
Most new tool purchases are reactive. A brokerage hits a pain point and buys something to fix it. That tool might solve the immediate problem, but it does not connect to anything else. It creates another login, another data source, and another training burden. Productivity gains come from tools working together, not from adding more of them.
How many technology tools does the average brokerage use?
The 2023 survey found the average brokerage uses 20.4 tools. That is up from 12.4 in 2020. But 60.87% of brokerages only pay for five or fewer tools directly. The gap comes from agents and teams buying their own subscriptions, using free trials, and patching workflows with whatever they can find. That means most of the tech stack is outside the broker’s control.
What tools did brokerages say are most effective?
Respondents named CRM platforms, KvCore, MLS tools, DotLoop, marketing tools, Follow Up Boss, websites, and DocuSign as their most effective technology. These are all point solutions that do one thing well. The challenge is that none of them give the broker a connected view of back-office operations like transactions, commissions, compliance, and financial performance.
What is the difference between adding a tool and adding a platform?
A tool solves one problem. A platform connects multiple operations so they function as a single system. When you add a tool, you solve a specific pain point but potentially create another data silo. When you add a platform, you replace multiple disconnected tools with one system that shares data across transactions, commissions, compliance, and reporting. The broker gets visibility across the whole operation instead of fragments of it.
How should a brokerage evaluate whether to buy new technology?
Before buying, ask three questions. First, does this tool integrate with what you already have, or does it create another silo? Second, will it reduce the total number of systems your staff has to manage, or add to it? Third, does it give you better visibility into your brokerage’s operations, or just solve one narrow problem? If the answer to all three points toward adding complexity, you may need a platform, not another point solution. Our guide on evaluating brokerage software vendors walks through this in detail.
What is reactive technology buying?
Reactive buying is when a brokerage purchases technology in response to an immediate problem rather than as part of a broader strategy. A compliance bottleneck leads to a document management tool. Slow signatures lead to an e-signature subscription. Each purchase is rational on its own, but after several rounds you end up with a collection of tools that were never designed to work together. The result is more systems, more data silos, and more operational drag.
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