The New Digital Age impacting Real Estate
Real Estate is facing a changing environment much like many other workplaces in the land. Today we live in a very visual, digital world where communication is rarely face to face, unless you are using Facetime on your smart phone, and increasingly on various platforms such as Facebook, Snapchat or Messenger and such like.
The way we run real estate is also undergoing dramatic change.
Long gone are the days of a small picture with a few words in the newspaper. In fact, I can’t recall last time I purchased a newspaper.
Now my news appears on my tablet or phone as I open it in the mornings and automatically updates me on anything that interests me throughout the day. The news usually includes vision and often full commentary. So, the news comes to me as it happens rather than me having to purchase a paper that is reporting what is effectively, yesterday’s events!
Similarly, the days of sticking up a “for Sale” sign on a property and placing an advert on a web site or two and waiting for a buyer to discover it are long gone. The days of sales reps working the phones talking to old prospects, cold calling, knocking on doors, sticking pamphlets in mail boxes are also long gone.
Today the marketing is done constantly online using the many communications platforms that the average person uses. Today we employ less sales reps but many more digital media people to be in the space that our clients are in be they buyers, sellers, investors or renters.
Today when buyers are interested in a property, they can view it online, often with an accompanying video, maybe a walkthrough presentation as well. They can also readily compare the property with others that they are interested in and also find out its history including purchase price, time on the market, any developmental applications etc.
So, by the time they call and ask for an inspection they have in fact pre-qualified themselves. The only thing left to discover is whether the property “feels” right for them. Can they “see” themselves living in a property.
The only thing that this digital age has yet to develop is the ability to “feel” a property is right for somebody
So we have adapted and adopted these new models going forward. Rather than a string of Sales Reps we will have one maybe two only for the listing and showing of properties, but all the marketing will be conducted by a team of digital media specialists.
The digital media people are the new age sales reps. The adage of adapt or perish has never been truer than it is today.
Lui Marcelli
Principal/Licensee
Country Realty
