In my nearly 30 years in the real estate business I have seen the business of selling real esate change dramatically. I have to say that in the past few years I have seen some pretty dramatic changes and below I have listed some of the changes I have seen and what I deemed to be important if Realtors are to not only survive but flourish over the next decade.
1) The internet is here to stay and any Realtor that wants to flourish in the future in real estate must have a strong web presence. I have told many clients that before they hire a Realtor to go to Google and type in the Realtors name. If their Realtors name does not fill up all of page one and most of page two "Run forest run"!
2) No matter how much things change, the basics of business relationships remains the same. People still want to be kept informed and the good old telephone is still one of the best means of doing this. Communicate with clients and keep them informed and you have a client for life.
3) The 80/20 rule is history and has been for years. The ratio is closer to 90/10 in most real state markets across the country. The web has caused this ratio to shrink. In any office USA you can find agents that embrace the web an those that do not. Very few Realtors are truly web savy.
4) More specialization is required more than ever before. This has been verified with the recent surge of short sales and bank owned homes. Those Realtors that have specialized and worked hard at educating themselves have and will continue to out produce their competition.
5) Those that look only in their back yard will never reach their potential. The web has opened up the real estate world. Walk across the street and ask your competition to give you their trade secrets and they will laugh at you. On the other hand make connections on sites like Active Rain and ask for help from agents hundreds or thousands of miles away and people will reach out to you like you could not imagine. My world changed immensely when I sought help from Active Rain members in 2007 and my sales have skyrocketed in an area where Realtors are struggling today. I have Active Rain and the web to thank for this. Realtors that don't reach out to the world of the web to increase their knowledge and networking are making a HUGE mistake.
I am sure that the next few years will see more changes that could never have been imagined, especially with technology and how we gather and disseminate information. It is an exciting time to be in the real estate profession and in my humble opinion the gap between the truly succesful Realtor and the average Realtor will continue to spread.
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Posted By: George Tallabas - Boise Idaho Real Estate Agent- Associate Broker
with RE/MAX Advantage, Canyon Counties #1 Brokerage in sales and listings
specializing in Boise Idaho Real Estate and Southwest Idaho Real Estate.
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