It feels good to create, doesn’t it? Whether you’re a backyard gardener, home cook, amateur woodworker or budding songwriter, there’s nothing quite like delighting yourself and others with the product of your labors. I have a sneaking suspicion that the feeling is also one reason many of you got into real estate in the first place: to build something of your own.

But what about when you feel the need to build something, not because you want to, but because there’s nothing else out there that’s doing the trick? We’ve all experienced that moment when a piece of technology fails and we think to ourselves, “I could do this better.”

Sure you could, but should you? That’s what this whole issue is about. From customer relationship management to transaction tracking to marketing campaigns, there are many tasks real estate professionals need to undertake, and the tools that have been built to tackle them don’t always work for every agent, or even every brokerage. You can buy technology off the shelf and use it as is, build your own solution, or partner with a vendor to get close to what you really want. There are a number of considerations in this process, so we spoke to real estate professionals who have been through each option to give you an idea of how to come at this multilayered question on your own.

If you’ve got additional thoughts on how to answer it, drop me a line at meg.white@agentpublishing.com. Personally, I’m still trying to decide if I should lay down real money on that garden planning app, but the one that identifies the plants that have been popping up in my backyard is well worth the money.