I'm 44 (and I am happy to tell you that), I won't mention the ages of my parents... Don't know how much my mom would like that?!, but you can do the math.
I honestly think they might have been the very last people on the planet to get an answering machine. Growing up we had one phone in the house and it was on the kitchen wall. I'm pretty sure I was away at college when my brother finally put a phone line in a bedroom and he put it in my bedroom and ran a second wire to his room via a splitter. For about a decade there was the generic voice that came on the machine telling people to 'PLEASE LEAVE A MESSAGE'. Then finally I put a personal message on it for them.
Mom called me once and one of her friends had said, "Tammy is that you, what are you doing at your parents house today?" We giggled over that for weeks.
It was in the 90's when they got an answering machine. And it's been since then that they have moved light years ahead. They now have a cell phone and a home computer with high speed access and satellite television (I also grew up with 4 tv channels).
Where is all this going and how does it relate to real estate?
This week the REO agent in my office got new instructions from one of her lenders who list their foreclosures with her. They are now utilizing a new web site and if you get an offer on one of their listings you must enter the information via the website as opposed to actually emailing them the contract. Well she had the signed offer, the EM check, the address of purchaser, phone number, knew that he was an investor buyer, but when she got to the blank that said "Enter purchasers email address" we hit a brick wall. MR. BUYER does not have an email address, he does not have a computer.
The system would not allow you to move on to the next screen without entering an email address. We emailed the asset manager and he told my agent to "Just use your email address". As it turns out, that is not the best advice.
So my agent put in her email address and blammo that the WRONG thing to do. It deleted all previous information when clicked save and put her as the buyer having her info associated with the buyer. So we had to have MR. BUYER use our computer to set up a free gmail account. Likely he still will never own a computer and the account will be closed at some point in the future due to inactivity.
So there's at least one company that won't sell you a house unless you have an email address!
Do you know people with no email address? I wonder what the numbers are?? This is the only information I could find on the subject.
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