So what do You think the Real Estate of Office of the Future will look like? Do you think it will look anything like the office you have come to know? Well, earlier this year we asked our selves this exact question. You see we had just arrived on a 4 week vacation, when we received a call from an agent in our office, telling us "the broker sold out to another franchise." Well needless to say we were not to happy. Especially, since we had just moved to this office 3 months earlier and had no clue this was coming. Rather than changing signs, cards, advertising ect we decided to purchase our own Realty Executives franchise in Shelby Township, Michigan, right down the road.
But we knew if we were going to do this we better really do our home work.So over the next 4 weeks we searched the internet looking for ideas of exactly what The Real Estate Office of the Future would look like. However, this was not an easy task. We decided to switch gears and see what offices of the future would look like. We came across a great article by Mark Benhar called Shaping the Office of the Future in several publications and read it in detail. What Mark said made a lot of sense.
Our next step was to take what we knew about current real estate offices, agents, consumers, our 40 years of combined experience and blend it into what we learned from Mark. Here's a few things we knew
- The large 4000+ real estate offices and parking lots were empty
- Private offices were filled with furniture, being used by one person and many times empty
- Offices were housing more at home agents and requiring more work stations
- Brokers were becoming less profitable due to rising costs, loss of agents and less sales
- Offices were closing earlier and were seeing less activity
- Most large corporations were using automated attendants for quicker response
- Consumers were looking for homes and agents on-line at home
- Walk ins, sign calls, homes magazine ads and local advertising was way down
- Consumers want a quick response and call till they get it
Here's what our Macomb County Real Estate Office of the Future looks like
- The office is 1000 sq ft
- Has No private or semi private offices
- Only full time, experienced, work at home agents
- 2 shared desks each with wireless or plug in Internet access
- 1 shared desk with desk top computer
- 2 counter work stations with desk top computer
- Meeting room with computer and 32" monitor
- Conference with TV and computer
- Auto attendant for direct response and no receptionist
- All For Sale signs have the agents cell number for direct contact
- Each agent and the office fax are e-faxes for ease of sharing
- About 95% paperless office
The real estate industry has gone through some huge changes over the past few years. We hope that our vision is right and our office takes us into the future. See what Inman News recently posted on their blog about the Real Estate Brokerage of the Future and let us know What you think?
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