Future Talk via Gen Y ~ A Conversation About Real Estate

Lola: I suppose Alex could sleep more soundly if the four students were from Stanford instead of Berkeley?

The changes that technology brings creates unknowns that cause anxiety. Remember though that change always brings new opportunities, so it is good if we take advantage of it.

I've skimmed a book entitled "Managing Generation Y" that has a different take on the topic, if interested.  One section described the irrelevance of time to a Gen Y individual... that quality and completion of tasks was important, but not an 8-5 schedule. 

Lola,

The consumer still has to do it the old-fashioned way by asking real estate agents the right questions to assure their competence. Even if someone is recommended by a friend the questions should still be asked.

Lola, I showed a house to a family this afternoon and then mentioned "Oh, by the way, the street floods when we have a lot of rain - like a nor'easter or a hurricane." You could see the buyer's eyes widen. Sooo, are you going to find that out by searching for homes on the internet? Not yet. Maybe someday, probably someday but not yet.

We still have job security but I definitely see a trend with younger people where they do not value a buyer's agent very much. They do think they can do it all themselves - until they get burned by buying a house where the street floods.

I remember being 21 and at Cal.  There are some brilliantly scary people there who come up with amazing things.

It will be interesting to see how things develop.  I think we'll keep seeing more and more transparency.

In the ten years that I've been in the real estate business, it has changed dramatically.  What agents traditionally used to build their business has fallen by the wayside.  Facebook and Twitter didn't exist ten years ago.  Postcard farming has been replaced by blogging.  The effectiveness of yesterday's techniques continues to decline and new techniques and strategies replace the old.  Real Estate has moved from being primarily "offline" to fully "online".  Agents are no longer the only gate keepers of real estate information but we still control property access.  It hasn't been an slow evolution, it's been a big bang!!!  I can't wait for the next ten years.

Yeah, so they can make a better online search. 

That's really not the whole real estate journey, it is only the beginning. No disrespect to a 21-year old, but once they "find the house online" they by and large are woefully ill-equipped to handle negotiations, inspections, title and compliance, mortgage maze, and 100 other bumps in the road, there isn't a computer code to fix that. Sorry. 

With IDX and VOW, we have given the consumers willing to do it themselves the keys to the kingdom. What happened? Agents who adapted made more money. The public still needs agents. 

I have been working on a post about the future of real estate and my speculation about it, and I have been seeing that folks like you are working in the same way so your post and others are welcome. It is also important that an outside player like your soon thinks. What we need right now is not for us to think like realtors and merely try to defend our existing position, we need to make sure that we do not suffer death by lack of imagination and openness to change.

Interesting post!  There should be alot of change with the new generations.  With all the knowledge out there online they will still need help to proceed through a transaction.

I remember in 1986 I was workig with a C-21 franchise in norhern Minnesota in a beautiful lakes area, of which there are many in MN. Two Harvard business grads had a difficult time separately finding vacation homes for their families. So they got some seed money and started a company called Vacation Property Networks (no longer in business). Their premise was that if they could buy enough companies in northern Minnesota and those companies would send pictures of their listings to a large office in the Mpls/StP area, thousands of people could shop in albums (pre online days) and know what cabin/lake home they wanted before they even left the Twin Cities. They wanted a 25% referral fee for the agent who sat in the Twin Cities office and showed the client some pictures.

These young brilliant minds just hadn't learned yet that you have to go to the property and experience the ambiance before you can possibly decide that it is a good fit for you.

I appreciate what young minds can come up with and look forward to them developing their ideas through experienced channels on the road to success. The young and confident often have thoughts that they don't need one thing or another, yet they are still at home needing everything. They also think that someone (the listing agent) is a threat to them but it is unlikely they have every spent a day with one. Who knows where their developing opinions are comeing from?

Haven't most of us over forty said, at least once, "If only I were 21 again, but knew what I know now." 

I have a millenial on summer vacation from college myself. I have a feeling that many in this generation are not going to want to handle all the paperwork that goes along with real estate transactions. That being said, they have wonderful, creative minds and I, too, am excited to see what the future holds. Having the ability to look for their own properties just gives them an extra tool to work with, but they will still need agents.

I am not an agent myself, but Administrative Manager - not sure why this is not showing up on my profile - will have this corrected if possible.

Hmm, Lola, you've given all of us something the chew on, and chew on, indeterminably. Although I must say that those who have stated that people will still need an agent for various reasons do have a point.

This is a great post! Thanks a lot! As a recent college grad myself I know that my peers are not going to be fooled into thinking that they need to go to you for all the information like some sort of gatekeeper. One way that I see things changing is a buyer researching for a longer time online and then when they find the house they like contacting an agent. I haven't been in the business a long time, but I see a huge shift from just providing information to providing service and that relationship becomes more important. 

Great post.  There are so many areas that need work and the eyes and minds of the next generation can hopefully bring many of those changes to light.

The more things stay the same, the more they change.

The listing agent seems to be a huge factor in making or braking a deal, hopefully you do find reliable, honest agents. Great post and thanks for sharing Lola!