A few thoughts on how technology has changed my business in 18 years...
When I started selling real estate in Denver Colorado at Jessop Realty, I was one of the younger agents that had a laptop computer, cell phone and a pager. It was too expensive to have people call the cell phone directly, so I would check the number and decide - pay phone, land line at home or work or cell phone.
I helped the office upgrade from a 1200 bit/s to a 2400 bit/s modem. We quickly moved to a 14.4 K bit/s modem
and we thought we were as fast as we could go and our Internet portals were Prodigy and AOL. For the younger people reading this that may not know those companies, check Wikipedia. For those that may not see the difference in those numbers, I started with a 1200 bit per second transmission and now most people have at least 1,000,000 bit/s as a minimum, my road runner is frequently close to 10,000,000 bit/s while my phone gets around 3,000,000 bit/s. Although our Internet connections cost more now, we used to have 60 to 90 minutes of cell time, NO TEXTS, and it would cost us more than what I pay now for unlimited voice and data, especially when we went over our limit. We would always call for credit on a dropped call to make sure we didn't go over out minutes.
We have Internet everywhere we go and can't live w/o it.
An early MLS search took time and fair amount of skill to get the results that one wanted w/o wasting a box of paper. You started at a blinking cursor you would type:
BR:3-4;BA:1-2;DIRN:1500-2100;DIRE:19000-21000;ST:1; etc
Anything not correct and you would have to start over. Today, if you drive by one of my listings, you can scan a qr code with your phone and go directly to the mobile website for that listing in seconds. Searches are so easy that a basic search doesn't take any training to accomplish and we can email the listings to our client w/o even printing. We used to love our clients that had fax machines so that we could fax the listings to them and not have to drive them over. (We had to make sure that the printer had a new ribbon or the fax copy was not even legible.
The MLS computer was so cumbersome that many agents relied primarily on the MLS book which was over an inch thick in Denver for all but the newest listings. The MLS was closely guarded information and we burned or shredded our book when we were finished with them. We had to keep one of each book for CMA purposes, but that was it. I never would have thought or imagined that my clients would or could be searching the MLS before ever calling me and doing from their phones and tablets to boot!
What started my musings about this, was a client I worked with today. She is in her twenties and when I left her a voice mail last night to confirm our appointment today, she didn't respond, she was out and was going to check it later. I texted her and she got back to me immediately. After a morning of showings, she texts me to tell me she liked house number 4. In short, I closed the deal texting with my client and realized, she preferred that mode of communication, even for a real estate transaction.
20 years ago if you were bilingual that meant you spoke French, Spanish, German, Japanese and the like...Today it can also mean that we understand what LOL, BRB, and BTW means as we communicate with a whole new generation of clients and younger agents.
As I could never have seen where technology was bringing real estate almost 20 years ago, it is with excitement and a little trepidation that I face the next 20 years (maybe not quite that many) I have always loved technology and have found real estate a great career to employ the latest technology. (Even-though my current experience with IE9 isn't working out very well...that might be the next blog...) When I was purchasing my current car the sales person was telling me I can basically get the same car for less w/o all the goodies. After 2 minutes of the test drive he realized that I wanted the car because of the goodies.
I used to marvel at what had changed during my grandmothers 90 years, but in my almost 49 years the change is staggering. When I was born there were no digital watches. When I was in 4th grade a family friend bought a calculator for well over $150 and it was as big as a phone and slow. By high school I had a watch with a calculator and phone book. (I never said that I haven't always been a geek, I am just glad it's cooler now!) My phone has more computer power than the lunar modules of old. Some cars can help keeps us in our lane of travel and the cruise will adjust our speed by radar and the car in front of us. Cars parallel park themselves. My iTouch is linked by Bluetooth to my car and I can remember being totally psyched that when my Discman could be played through the cassette player in my car.
Interestingly enough, I am seeing that our clients want more touch now than a few years ago, I think the challenge is to find the way they need to be "touched" so that we are meeting their needs. Again, what a great business. (And yes I realize that has a double meaning, but can't figure out another way of stating that point!)
"Should I text, email, call, tweet or Facebook you when I have an answer for you?" (Notice FAX wasn't in there)
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