Real Estate’s Platform Problem

By: J. David Chapman/February 6, 2026

I recently read a comment from Mark Cuban predicting that entire industries will rise or fall not because of talent, capital, or demand, but because of their dependence on a single platform they do not control. That idea stuck with me because it describes modern real estate almost perfectly.

Commercial, residential, and short-term rental real estate have quietly become some of the most platform-dependent sectors in the economy. That dependence did not happen overnight. It arrived disguised as efficiency, transparency, and convenience. To be fair, platforms have delivered all three. But over time, convenience becomes reliance, and reliance becomes risk.

Commercial real estate offers the clearest example. Today, nearly every serious commercial transaction flows through CoStar. Market analytics, property histories, rent and sale comparisons, ownership structures, financing records, leasing activity, and even industry news now live inside a single dominant ecosystem. Brokers, lenders, appraisers, developers, investors, and researchers all drink from the same well.

The benefits are real. Information is standardized. Markets are more transparent. Young professionals can analyze deals faster than ever before. But the uncomfortable question remains. What happens when an entire industry outsources its institutional memory and analytical backbone to one private platform? Commercial real estate did not just adopt a tool. It built its operating system around it.

Residential real estate followed a different path but arrived at a similar destination. The residential market still runs through the National Association of Realtors and its network of Multiple Listing Services. Pricing, exposure, cooperation, and market transparency continue to rely on Realtor-controlled infrastructure. For decades, that system protected professionalism and consumer trust.

Yet consumers increasingly search, compare, and form opinions on platforms that sit outside the MLS, while practitioners remain dependent on NAR driven data and rules to function. Once again, platforms shape behavior, sometimes subtly and sometimes decisively.

Then there is short term rental real estate, where platform dependence is no longer subtle at all. The modern short-term rental business was built on Airbnb and VRBO. Entire investment strategies, pricing models, furnishing decisions, debt underwriting, and even property acquisitions are now based on Airbnb dashboards, algorithms, reviews, and search placement.

For many operators, Airbnb is the market. That works, until it does not. When a platform controls visibility, demand flow, pricing signals, and customer relationships, owners are no longer just real estate operators. They are participants in someone else’s ecosystem. A policy change, fee adjustment, algorithm tweak, or regulatory response can materially alter income overnight, even when the underlying real estate has not changed.

The property did not fail. The platform shifted. This is where Cuban’s warning becomes real.

Platforms are not neutral. They respond to incentives, shareholders, regulations, and competition. When an industry becomes structurally dependent, leverage quietly moves away from the people who own the assets.

Across commercial, residential, and short-term rentals, platforms now influence what gets marketed, what gets valued, what gets financed, and even what gets built. Algorithms shape pricing psychology. Data presentation affects perception. Visibility affects velocity. Professionals adapt, not always to the market, but to the platform.

None of this is an argument against platforms. They are powerful, necessary, and here to stay. It is an argument against complacency. Real estate has always been resilient because it is grounded in place, relationships, and human behavior. The danger is not using platforms. It is forgetting how to operate, think, and create value outside of them.

Platforms may organize the information, but real estate still happens on streets, in neighborhoods, and across kitchen tables. The professionals who remember that will be the ones still standing when the platform shifts.

Dr. J. David Chapman is the Chair of Finance and Professor of Real Estate at The University of Central Oklahoma (jchapman7@uco.edu)