Our Changing Industry
We spend a lot of time on discussing new business models, social media, technology, and how we all think the consumer wants to buy. We prognosticate endlessly about how each idea we have or new technology we observe is going to revolutionize the real estate industry, and agents are going to either evolve or die (Whenever I hear things like that I think of the old Comic Book Alien with a Huge Head carrying off a struggling woman who looks well dressed for either work, a cocktail party OR an alien abduction).
Sometimes I think we forget about the basics that are involved in our business. No matter how much time people spend on their computer looking for property, they need to walk the neighborhood, see the property, experience the home and the neighborhood. And they want someone they can trust , who is knowledgeable about those things to help provide them with guidance in finding a property that has the right location and appropriate physical attributes in a community that they have chosen.
And then they still need help with negotiation, the physical inspection of the property, the contractual portion of the purchase, obtaining financing etc. And no, I don’t think attorneys negotiate worth a damn in real estate (unless they specialize – and have a great deal of knowledge about real estate valuation and the current market, in which case they are a real estate professional with a law degree).
We Still Need Boots on the Ground
And with all due respect to all of the on-line real estate models I’ve seen to date, they still end up with an agent meeting a consumer and providing the on the ground service that all of us provide to our customers and clients. No, I’m not a Luddite. I love technology and think that its a very useful tool, and I am constantly looking for new ways to use technology to make me better at my job and my company more efficient. But I don’t think that we’re going to wake up anytime soon, and find out that we need to be retrained for new jobs.
Let Me Give You an Example
The store pictured above is an amusing business model that represents IMHO the contradictions of the thought processes found in much of the real estate business and the RE.net
People have always had stuff they didn’t want. We have all heard that one man’s trash is another man’s gold. And we all know that when we have trash, we want to sell it and turn it into gold. At first people would sell things from their house , or on local physical bulletin boards in stores and schools, on their own. Then there were enough people recycling things that antique stores and thrift shops became their venues of choice.
Technology improved, and people started by posting things on Electronic Bulletin Boards for Sale. But these were limited enterprises commercially, until someone got the bright idea of building an on-line auction site know as EBay. EBay changed the way people sold their junk. It was easy to buy on EBAY, and there was tremendous exposure for your junk. But some people found it unsatisfactory, and the store above was born (and it is only one of a number of such stores, and franchises around the country. People are now going to a physical location to sell their stuff on the Internet. (There is a great conversation about this business model in the Steve Carell movie The 40 Year Old Virgin, but I just couldn’t find the video clip to add here- But what the heck its a funny movie go see it and you’ll remember this post when you see the scene) Is it just me or is this a huge ironic circle?
The More Things Change
Maybe its just because I’ve seen so much in the industry over the years which have brought some tremendous changes in How we do What we do, but the basics are still the same. We take Buyers and Sellers through one of the most traumatic events of their lives, protecting them as best we can, helping them to reach their goals, and making the process as smooth as possible for them. We reach farther, get more information faster, and transmit it to clients in distant places, but we still add value to the process, and I believe its a value the consumer wants and looks for, So far I haven’t seen a technology that changes their needs or our ability to satisfy it – as hard as that seems to us some times. So I guess we’ll keep on needing to go to work for at least a little while longer.
