Note:  If this blog entry looks familiar, it's because this is the second time I'm posting it.  The first time, some gremlins came and by the time they were done, this entry had disappeared.  :(  Here it is again...

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Realtor-haters and Internet-fearing-Realtors may not love each other, and they may not have much in common, but they do agree on one key thing: the Internet is the death knell of our profession, about to consign all of us to the same sad scrap heap of history on which travel agents were once summarily, and somewhat brutally, tossed.

It is therefore perhaps ironic that on this one issue, the only issue on which these two diametrically, almost pathologically, opposed groups agree, they are both wrong. Sorry, folks, the Internet ain’t gonna put us out of business, no matter how badly the first group wishes it would, and the second group hopes it won’t.

To both groups I say, in my best James Carville-inspired Clinton-esque campaign trail voice, “It’s the relationship, stupid!”

Before I explain, let me clarify what I don’t mean, in the interest of avoiding a winged-monkeys flame war.

• First, I don’t mean that the Internet hasn’t had, isn’t having, and won’t have a large impact on the way real estate business is done. Quite the contrary, the Internet has changed and continues to change the industry in many ways, most of them good for the consumer.
• Secondly, I don’t mean that an average Realtor, or a top-producing one for that matter, wouldn’t benefit from becoming more Internet-savvy. Quite the opposite — the rich efficiency-and-effectiveness-enhancing fruits of the Internet are there for all to feast.

So, what then do I mean by, “It’s the relationship, stupid!”

What I mean is this: the real estate business is not really about homes, and transactions, and escrows, and mortgages. It’s not about negotiation, and home inspections, and contracts, and deadlines. It is, instead, primarily a business of relationships, and of the dreams that such relationships can achieve.

When clients engage a Realtor to help them buy or sell a home, they are entrusting that person to guide them through what for most of them is the biggest financial transaction of their lives, a roller coaster of elation and disappointment, of happiness and sadness, of agreements and arguments, of satisfaction and stress. It is, in short, a relationship, and the success of the whole process depends to a large extent on how well that Realtor cultivates and manages that relationship.

Similar relationships are also found in other “intermediary” professions in which an agent acts on behalf of a principal. The extent and strength of that relationship is, I posit, directly correlated to the difficulty in disintermediating it.

Why has the Internet been so successful in driving the travel agent industry to near extinction? A big reason — not the only one, to be sure — is that most people never thought of their travel agent in the same way they did of their attorney, their Realtor, their accountant, or their private money manager. A travel agent was simply the person on the other end of the line who helped you buy a ticket from Peoria to Pretoria. The next time you called the 800 number, or dropped by the travel office, you would often deal with a completely different person. Consumers never really developed a deep relationship with travel agents, because the travel agent industry was not one in which relationships were key to being a successful intermediary, so when a cheaper, more efficient way came about to get tickets, consumers did so.

Back to the original question — will the Internet disintermediate Realtors? It might, for that relatively small percentage of folks for whom this relationship simply isn’t that important — the die-hard do-it-yourselfers, the inveterate Realtor-haters, or more benignly, investors who buy and sell frequently and simply don’t need the hand-holding.

For the rest of the population, those who appreciate the need for guidance, for counsel, for support — for the relationship — Realtors will always be around and needed.

Winged monkeys, go home, and please leave us alone.

Internet-fearing Realtors, take a deep breath. The Internet will not cut you out of the business, unless you deserve it, unless your client relationship skills are so bad that your clients prefer no relationship to one with you. If that’s the case, then you, my friend, have a much bigger problem than the Internet.