Just a few days ago my wife and I were in line at the supermarket.  The lady in front of us did not have a lot of items since it was an express lane.  However, she decided to pay for her groceries with a check.  It took longer for her to write the check, than it did to scan and bag her whole order.

I am rarely in a rush so I was not bothered by the lost time.  I did occur to me that it had been a very long time since I had seen someone write a check for groceries.  Times have changed quickly because using a check is the way I remember paying for groceries for much of my adult life.

What has happened in the last couple of months in the financial world is certainly something unprecedented in my life.  The changes which will happen as a result of this are unknown at this point, but they will likely be substantial.

This got me to thinking about how real estate might need to change.

The buyers who resufrace are likely going to different.  So much wealth has been lost, that I would not be surprised if a different type of buyer comes calling.

We may have many retirees who have been permanently downsized. They might be looking for much smaller homes.  Also I think people are going to be much more careful about where they locate. Stability in an area is going to be a selling feature.

The trend away from traditional media for searching for properties is going to accelerate.  Newspapers cannot seem to downsize fast enough.  Printed catalogs with just homes in them seem a dying way of marketing.

We have already seen buyers flock to the web, but even that might be turned on its head.

The large national sites have gotten even bigger.  Yet the amount of warm and fuzzy information that they provide about areas is slim to non-existent.  Some are working to attract local experts and comments. They hope to build up some local knowledge so that buyers can find more than square footage and price on their sites.

However, I think that effort to bring local experts to these large sites where their voices might be lost is doomed from the start.  There just are not enough local experts who enjoy writing to provide any kind of decent coverage even for the large national sites that are smart enough to know that they need them.

As people continue to learn the web, static webpages will also die a long and painful death.  At some point I think the whole equation has to be turned around.

Instead of trying to get people to ever larger sites where they can search among countless properties in a manner that is similar to looking for a needle in a haystack, I think we have to work to get people to sites which are built on local information and happen to have real estate in their mix also.

If you think about it, people looking for homes want to know much more than what might be in a listing.  In times past they would visit and try to imagine themselves living in the area.  Now people often want to hear from others living in an area before they will even consider visiting. Social networking is now very important.

That changes the equation because now you need fresh, continuously updated local content to even get a shot at the clients.  You also need information from people besides yourself.

My thought is the best way to start is to have a site which is an electronic town square.  You have events, business listings, blogs, pictures, and real estate listings.

A friend of mine who has been working for years on publicly accessbile wireless network plans for cities and towns has a similar vision and a wife who is a Realtor® like me.

He was director of the Blacksburg Electronic Village for years so the Internet runs through his veins.

Recently he has brought up a site for Carteret County which I think will turn out to be a great resource for the people of the county and for others who might want to be residents.  It is also going to be a great place for Realtors® to hang their shingle.

While the Carteret North Carolina site is new and still getting content and listings, I think it offers a glimpse of the future.

Certainly not all of our current world of real estate is going to disappear, but I do think our other sites will have to evolve like my company's website where we now have a blog, Crystal Coast Living, that I am fortunate enough to be writing.

I figure if stock prices keep going down, soon people will turn to something pretty tangible like land to protect their remaining wealth.  Waterfront property or nice homes in an area with low cost living might start looking attractive.  A piece of land might be something nice to have once again.

If I have my way, that piece of land is going to be here on the Southern Outer Banks in Carteret County where the skies are blue almost all the time and the waters are warm enough for me at least three quarters of the year.