Real Estate Data as a Media Company with Clayton Collins, Founder and CEO of HW Media

02/08/24 • 36 min

In this episode we have Clayton Collins, the Founder and CEO of HW Media. Clayton discusses the growth and vision of HW Media, the challenges of building a media powerhouse, predictions for the real estate market in 2024, and their upcoming annual event, The Gathering. Clayton shares insights on interest rates, inventory, and consumer psychology in the housing industry. He also highlights the importance of research and data in providing a full picture for housing professionals. The conversation concludes with a discussion on HW Media's plans for the future.

More about Clayton and HW Media
HW Media provides mortgage, real estate and fintech professionals the news, knowledge and community they need to support decision making and business growth. Aligned with our mission to Move Markets Forward, we publish daily news and content through each of our core publishing brands including HousingWire, RealTrends, and Reverse Mortgage Daily. HW Media is based in Dallas, TX with team members across the country.
Clayton Collins is the founder and CEO of HW Media. He leads HW Media’s corporate strategy and content roadmap, while building a world-class team of business media professionals. He is also managing partner of Riomar Capital, an entrepreneurial investment firm that acquired HousingWire in 2016. Prior to founding Riomar Capital, Collins worked at RBC Capital Markets in the mergers and acquisitions group and served as vice president of national sales and marketing at Citibank.

And for those considering attending The Gathering, HousingWire is giving Tech Nest listeners 50% off the cost of VIP tickets. Just use this link when you register to get your VIP ticket at a lower cost than the standard admission.

Previous Episode

Advances in Tenant Screening Processes with Tim Ray, Founder and CEO at VeriFast

Tim Ray, CEO of VeriFast, discusses the importance of identity verification in the real estate industry and the challenges of tenant fraud. He explains how VeriFast's single-source verification platform helps verify individuals' identities and financial details, providing a more secure and flexible screening process for renters—especially for those with a non-traditional income. Tim also highlights the company's integrations with property management systems and the need for trust and transparency in data sharing. He predicts that credit checks will become less relevant in rental applications and that document processing using PDFs will fade away as technology advances.

More about Tim and VeriFast
VeriFast is the only single-source verification platform for identity and financial data that enables applicants to verify their data via a digital connection or document upload with OCR and fraud detection. VeriFast provides a simple, configurable API and turnkey UI that delivers that best ROI for companies that need to validate identity, banking, payroll and/or tax data.
VeriFast claims to be a super aggregator of the best verification technology vendors into one universal platform that configures and enriches data to deliver superior decisioning with a best-in-class user experience and trusted by everyday consumers to share their data digitally.
There are a multitude of verticals from real estate to banking, insurance, government, and beyond that still rely on slow, analogue processes to share and verify identity and financial data.
VeriFast provides the most trusted verification platform in the world with the highest converting opt-in rate in the industry. Getting consumers to share their data is tough, it’s our superpower.
VeriFast has a four-star rating on TrustPilot, and we’re the only company brave enough to invite every applicant to rate their experience publicly.

Tim Ray is a 4X Founder and Angel investor with a passion for building and scaling innovative businesses from ideation, and a track record of successful exits.

Tim is passionate about the importance of creative "out-the-box" thinking, analytical decision-making and developing great relationships to solve complex problems and find winning outcomes.

Currently Tim is Co-Founder & CEO of VeriFast, the first single-source verification platform that helps companies verify an individual's identity and financial details using consumer-permissioned data; reducing billions of dollars lost to inefficient underwriting and fraud annually.

Tim plays dad to an amazing family with 3 kids and an incredible wife, and is passionate about travelling and being active with friends: skiing, golfing, cycling and more recently kite surfing.

Next Episode

Modern Mobile Access for Multifamily with Brandon Peterson, CEO at Geokey

Brandon Peterson, the founder and CEO of GeoKey, discusses the benefits of mobile access control and property management solutions. He shares his background as a serial entrepreneur and the inspiration behind starting GeoKey. Brandon explains the importance of partnerships and integrations in the proptech industry and how GeoKey is leveraging AI to streamline operations and enhance the customer experience. He also discusses market trends, and the future of building access and security.

About Brandon and Geokey
Geokey is a mobile access solution for property owners and tenants to control the security of their assets without requiring Wi-Fi or readers. In a single app, Geokey controls interior and exterior doors, elevators, gates, amenity access, thermostats, water detection, and guest passes. With detailed data and analytics, it’s easy to see live tracking and it’s simple to add new users or change their level of access.

Brandon is a third generation entrepreneur with a passion for innovation and solving problems. After gaining experience in starting a coworking space, real estate project, nonprofit, ecommerce, and managing gyms - the idea for Geokey was born. He bootstrapped their beginning, got a patent for using location services to authenticate access and now they’ve found their niche in multi-family and college campuses.