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The Future of Search?

By
Real Estate Broker/Owner with Hank Perry

We knew it happened - the ultimate purpose of the internet arrived, quite sometime ago, and it is search.  Search is an appliance - ubiquitous, not device-centric, able to be triggered from the simplist of mobile phones.  Now -- the question is, what does this mean to real estate search?

Well, it has to mean something more than, due respect, Realtor.com. 

When I look at the future of search, i think of Pandora.com - internet radio that pushes songs to you based on a sophisticated "music genome project" where hundreds of attributes were catalogued.  I type in a song, and it begins to play other songs with similar attributes. 

 

What's the connection? If we are stuck as an industry on the notion that people simply buy bricks and morter, then look at Amazon.com - selling a commodity over the internet, yes - but also, looking at other things you might buy based on your history of search.  I know you and I get prickly about privacy when it comes to things like that - but there may be a day where you don't care - because time is short, and you follow the recommendations and they end up with a cross-sale.  In real estate, if we don't sell bricks and morter, then we sell lifestyle - all those "intangible" qualities which are kind of like describing music. 

I wonder what it would take to build a "housing genome" with thousands of lifestyle attributes - what it's like to play t-ball at the park 2 streets down, or roller blade on the path nearby, or to sit in sunlit rooms in the winter time under sycamore trees, or any other of the literally hundreds of psychological elements that people see and "buy" when they decide to purchase a house.

I also wonder if consumers would subscribe to such a notion - the way they do with, for example, internet radio.

 

MLS - your future is short.  Personally I think Google might have a chance at building something like what i mention - but we as an industry of thousands of different Boards, MLS rules, alliances - it just doesn't seem likely.

 

Michael Lee
Frog Realty - Tallahassee, FL

This is a great point.  We all spend a lot of dough being in the different MLS systems.  If this were to go away...?

Apr 19, 2009 04:31 PM
Anonymous
Judi Keenholtz

This is very well written and thoughtful. I love the analogy with radio and personal preferences. Selling real estate is truly about lifestyle, and in our new economy, more than ever, the home is respected as more than just an investment. We will see....

Apr 27, 2009 06:27 AM
#2
Joanne O'Donnell
Chic Home Interiors - Oakland, CA

Hank, this is what staging is all about - lifestyle selling techniques, it is what I teach in the
Certified Staging Professionals course I teach, it is paramount to the whole concept of real estate staging as it should be practiced.

Aug 08, 2009 02:59 AM