Disrupting real estate brokering

Philadelphia-based Houwzer, a tech-enabled real estate brokerage & home services startup, raises $9.5 million from Edison Partners to fund geographic expansion in the Mid-Atlantic region.  Ventures seeking to disrupt the real estate brokerage business, which also include Fly Homes, Redfin and REX, have come a long way from the days when YHD Foxtons tried to reboot the space with low fees, leveraging technology for product and experience differentiation.  The challenge they face, is that these plays, as they internalize and optimize large portions of incumbent brokering capabilities, exist in the middle between those who seek to:

1. Leverage readily available external antecedents, but exert substantial control (e.g., Homelight) on one end; and
2.  Fully disrupt the incumbent model by inserting the company as counter-party into the real estate sell/buy transaction.(e.g., OpenDoor, Knock, Offerpad) on the other.

Is this middle defensible ground or is this no-man's land?