I remember when people used to come in the office and ask the question, “Can you help us buy a house”. Wow. That even sounds like a long time ago as I write it! Of course, personal computers had been around for forty years, but the internet was just starting to gain a lot of footing, and real estate search engines for consumers did not really exist yet. The listing organizations were just starting to perfect platforms that replaced “the book”, when real estate agents were pretty much the gateway to buying a home unless you bought it unlisted directly from the owner.
Of course, that all changed. Now buyers have Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com, and I’ve been told about 40,000 other search engine sites available to them. I have not bothered to visit all of them, but I can tell you some are better than others, and some are really pretty bad. It’s not really a bad thing, it’s just different. Nowadays, instead of coming to the office asking for help, prospective buyers walk in with a fistful of papers or an iPad and say, “We want to see these houses”. Actually, it can save a lot of time for both the agent and the prospect, but there are a few pitfalls.
There was a time when it was predicted that real estate agents would become unnecessary. Obviously, since there have been well over 100,000 new agent licenses issued since the new millennium, that was not accurate. Real estate is a little more complicated than a lot of folks give it credit for being. You can buy known commodities online. You can buy underwear, computers, tools, furniture, and most other things online because you can see something just like it at Wally World. You can even buy a car on the internet, although that seems a little bold for my taste.
The difference is that in real estate school they teach us that all real estate is unique. Even “identical” lots with “identical” homes in the same subdivision are in some way different from each other and all other lots. That photo of the perfect home with the ocean front view and the ski lift next door might have been “photo-shopped” to eliminate the nearby canary farm (I don’t know what a canary farm is either, so just assume it’s not a good thing to have around). Some people are perfectly capable of doing the research themselves … because they are professionals who likely are using the same tools we use but don’t practice real estate … not because they are using a consumer website that sells advertising to make a profit.
To a Realtor®, the phrases “I saw it on Zillow” and “I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express” are basically interchangeable. Would you try to pull your own wisdom teeth using instructions you saw on “DIY Network”? Zillow can provide some useful information, but like the others, it is not always accurate or up to date. Recently I was in a listing interview and the seller kept pulling out his laptop to tell me what he knew because “he saw it on Zillow”. The information was totally outdated, and of the five “comps” he used to arrive at a listing price, three were off the market and were never sold. If the property didn’t sell, it was probably overpriced, and there is a good chance it was overpriced because “the other guy saw it on Zillow” too!
Not all dentists or attorneys or real estate agents are perfect, but we do know some stuff. It’s a great idea to do your homework, but in that process of knowledge building, use your resources to find a good Realtor® or lawyer or dentist rather than trying to do it all yourself. Most agents really do want to help you, not have a contest with you over who has the neatest toys.
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