After being a managing broker for three of the largest brokerages in the country I've seen and experienced a LOT of corporate bureaucracy. Red tape lines the hallways of each corporate office and the bureaucracy within the conference rooms can make me ill within minutes. HR Directors sometimes seem to be an evil mix of guidance counselor and my bitchy ex wife who just loves to point out how everything I do is wrong.
Not that I'm bitter...
Corporate policy has it's place, no question, but the dinosaurs of the industry (those who refuse to adapt to the consumer's wants) have caused enough people to rebel and gain voice that now the real estate revolution is upon us. The growing inefficiencies, lacking value propositions, and stiff-shirted bullying of "discount" models has finally pushed the consumer over the threshold of what they are willing to accept, and now, finally, something is being done about it.
And we have the dinosaurs to thank.
I was always amazed at how long it takes to "do" anything within a corporate structure. There was always so much (double) talk. Blah Blah Blah blah blah........
Change is scary for some people. And for some large brokerages, and other companies for that matter, it is simply not acceptable. Dave Liniger, founder of Re/Max, declares that the internet is "over-valued" because he started Re/Max thirty years ago and hasn't had to deal with the actual task of finding a client and then hearing that cleint tell him that they don't want to pay 6% or even 5% to sell their house and then have to decide whether to walk away from the business so you can claim that you are not a "discount" agent to your buddies at the board luncheon, or take that listing at 4% and help these people with their goals of selling their home and collect that "discount" check of only $6500 for his hours of work.
You can't blame some for trying to keep things the same- they've made tons of money charging the same amount for decades and they haven't really had any competitive models to challenge them. Help-U-Sell? Assist-2-Sell? I don't like their models at all, but that's not the point- the point is they were never a threat to big brokerages because they weren't very big- or good.
And anytime a new model did come along the big boys would, as Michael Arrington of TechCrunch stated, "Systematically tear them apart".
But now a smarter, tech-savvy, empowered consumer is leading the charge. And new models are gaining ground and establishing themselves as players within the breadth of the real estate landscape, which has been growing rapidly with the influx of agents and innovation.
There has never been a more exciting time to be in real estate. And with real estate historically being a topic of conversation anyway, there has never been a better time to be someone who likes to talk about it.
Comments(12)