Remembering ...

While meeting with an appraiser, whom I've done business with for years, we were laughing at the way we used to do business compared to now.

Remember when websites were very cryptic, and were controlled by cyber geeks for exhorbitant amounts of money? I remember it costing me five bucks to add or remove a listing from our site. Looking back on it, it was a really pitiful looking thing that had no tools like we have today. No search engine inside, no links, just pitiful. For a brief period, those people held the gate keys, like the programmers did back in the days of mainframe computers.

I recalled one day many years ago when she came to our office to look at our "bulletin board" in search of comps. Gathering comps in those days was extremely time consuming and expensive. Then we thought we were really doing something by providing a free market analysis to sellers. WooHOO!

One of my friends who is now retired, used to be the Grand Dame of Northside Atlanta real estate. She asked me last week if the new internet capability that consumers enjoy makes my job more difficult than it used to be. I said no, because instead of people coming to me asking really stupid questions and wasting my time driving them everywhere showing houses, they usually don't call until they've done some research and are prepared to get serious.

I have no desire to go back to the "good ol' days".