Episode 306 – Craig Rowe, Real Estate Technology Reporter, Inman News

  Journalism has evolved through time. Covering a myriad of topics from news, to entertainment, to real estate technology, journalists have surely become versatile throughout the years. Craig Rowe, a real estate technology reporter for Inman News, joins Bill Risser to talk about his role and the knowledge he is able to impart on the team. Craig recalls how his love for writing and his interest in real estate served a great purpose in his position at Inman. Listen in as Craig walks us through his summers as a kid, to how he got involved in real estate and settling in as one of Inman’s greatest assets. --- Craig Rowe, Real Estate Technology Reporter, Inman News In this episode, I’m going to talk to a copywriter, journalist, and backcountry guide. I’m going to talk to Craig Rowe. He is a real estate tech reporter for Inman News. I met Craig at the Inman Event. He’s a neat guy and has a great background. We’re going to have a lot of fun exploring some stuff outside of the world of real estate and talk about how things work at Inman. It’s a very interesting conversation. Let’s get this thing started. Craig, welcome to the show. It’s great to be here, Bill. Thanks for having me. We met at the Inman Event in Las Vegas. It was so much fun getting back in front of people again. Molly McKinley knows you well. It was nice having a conversation. I have read a lot of your columns. Tech is my thing, and it’s your thing. I appreciate all the work, insight, and effort that goes into those. We’re going to talk a lot about that and also some more stuff as well. I like starting where people grew up. It’s always fun for me to see these different parts of the country. For you, it’s Upstate New York. First of all, I had no idea where Caledonia was. My first thought was, “There is Rome, Syracuse, and Ithaca. It has to be somewhere in that neighborhood.” I’m not too far off. You’re not too far off. It is South of Rochester. Let’s talk about that upbringing growing up in New York. We’re going to talk about what you’re doing now. I’m going to assume that a lot of who you are now was influenced by where you grew up. I loved growing up in a small town, and I am now full circle right back in a similar location here in Northern California. Caledonia was neat. It was a small town. I had a lot of close friends. I have three older brothers. In all our lawns, we had all these families in the neighborhood. All the backyards met, and every family down the street had six kids, and the back of us also had 5 or 6. There was this amalgamation of families and all these kids of different age groups all the time interacting. It was very Americana for the most part in this little town. We spent all-time outdoors. We are very much free range. You could open the door at 8:00 AM, and I’ll come back at 8:00 PM. That was pretty much it. In those hours, I could be anywhere in the local trout stream fishing, and at some point during the day, you throw the pole back in the garage without your parents even knowing, and you take off again. I could be riding my BMX bike for two hours, and in the afternoon, we’re playing football, Wiffle ball, baseball, or something. That was it every day throughout the Summer until Winter stopped us from being able to do that stuff. I grew up in San Diego. It’s a little bit different situation. When the street lights went on, I had to be home, that mentality, which was cool. It is that whole connectivity you talked about. It wasn’t people going into a garage, the service store, and to the house. You could get home and never see anybody if you wanted to. That was not the case for you. Everybody knew everybody. I love that. We’re going to talk about how much of an outdoorsman you are. We will get to that later. As you continue, you end up going to college locally. You stuck around up there and went to Nazareth College. You are an English Major, which makes perfect sense because of what you do, but you’re also a soccer player. We got to talk about that for a second. [bctt tweet="The journalistic integrity of the company you work for matters." username="billrisser"] In high school, I played primarily forward and halfback because I was fast. I was not your foot skill guy and beating a lot of people with the ball. I was fast and aggressive, getting open and running down the opposite player’s best guy. Thankfully, my college coach recognized that. The position I grew into in college was someone would call a marking back where my sole job was to follow around the other team’s best player the entire game. I made an art of it. I would follow him to his bench, and when he stepped off the field, I would go back to my field. I would try and get into their heads. I had an aggression issue. That would often come out on the field. I led the team in yellow cards in my senior year and got a couple of notable ones in college. Ultimately, I always relied on being fast and my speed for the most part. That is what helped me excel. I was not the best athlete on the field, but I was aggressive and played hard all the time, and that led to that. Caledonia was a football town. It had one of the better football programs for many years in the state of New York overall. They were always good. All the good athletes played football. I played soccer with a few of the other misfits and ended up at Nazareth, which was a big lacrosse school and remained a very prominent lacrosse school in the country in Division 3. From what I understand in lacrosse, there is not a big difference between D3 and D1. There’s a fine line. I ended up playing soccer at a lacrosse school. We didn’t have the best record, but it was still a lot of fun. I enjoyed it very much. I was an English Major, but I started as an Art Major. I was always creative. I grew up drawing. It was the same thing. I was very inspired by comic books when I was a kid. I was drawing and writing all the time. You got an Art Major and turned into an English Major. What was your plan? What was the thought process when you got out of school? I got no plan. I talk about this often. I remember being at my girlfriend’s apartment. That night, I graduated from college, and I said, “Now what?” This goes right to my personality. I’m not necessarily a planner. I’m not career-driven. I’m much more lifestyle-driven, and that surfaced right when I got to school. All my friends were headed off to grad school. I have some regrets about that. I probably should have gone after an MFA in Screenwriting or something, which is a big love of mine, or magazine writing, or straight into journalism. While I’m the only Inman writer, that does not have a Journalism degree. I am the only one that has a real estate license for a while. I was licensed in the industry several times. I had no real plan, so I ended up moving down to Florida with one of my brothers. Somehow, you get involved in real estate. I believe it happened up in North Carolina. It did. Let’s talk about going to Raleigh and what you were doing up there. One thing that might be of interest to touch on what I did in Florida is when I got into publishing in journalism. I had a short stint at the Orlando Sentinel doing graphic design when newspapers were still thick with classifieds. I was doing all the design work on these very expensive auto dealership ads, where you’re placing the car image and getting down into the five-point type, and all that thing. I went from there and worked for a magazine company. This magazine company was attached to an over-the-counter penny stock company. You’ve seen Wolf of Wall Street. I was knee-deep in that environment. If you remember those scenes in the movie when they’re in this giant bullpen and all these guys are out on the phone. Picture me in an office to the side with one editor, and he and I were putting together these magazines that were advertising these stocks. Even though it was much smaller and not New York City, that atmosphere was spot on. At one point, we went down, and my editor told me not to go. He was a great guy. He said, “Don’t do this.” I said, “It sounds fun.” The owner of our company rented a bunch of limousines, stocked them full of beer, and what I learned later were drugs. We drove down to Miami or close to it to look at Marina, this boat company building these boats. On the way back is when everybody started to party. I was pretty intimidated by what was going on. By the end of that car ride, one of the managers, a mid-level guy, had fired everybody in the limos. [caption id="attachment_4116" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Real Estate Technology: Consumers are already incredibly educated, but they don't know how to steer the ship yet. They’re on the ocean and they got their boat but they need someone to navigate it for them.[/caption]   He pulled over three times on the Florida turnpike and made people get out and find their own way back. I was the only one he was not in charge of, so he could not fire me. By the end of the night, we’re back in the parking lot, and it was me and this ravaging, coke-addled, drunk stockbroker and his girlfriend sitting there staring at me. I witnessed this whole debacle fights inside. It was...