Don't lose faith

The email below was sent to me from Benjamin Day, an agent and educator in Colorado Springs, in response to my article last week on Inman, Think Big. He is also the Director of Career Development for his firm.

By and large the real estate world has no respect for the present consumer culture it lives in. It isn’t just the MLS, it isn’t just Redfin, it isn’t just about value; it’s as if the real estate community lives in a lead-lined box ignorant of how obscenely connected and overlapping the entire world is. The real estate community’s sin in regard to consumer response is demanding that the consumer move at the same plodding pace and adhere to the same liturgical elements that we have always lived by.

What I personally find really refreshing about your take is the same thing that (unfortunately) a great deal of the real estate community equates with anarchy: breaking down the boundaries of accessibility to make real estate more available and understandable to the masses. The consumer WANTS to participate; they don’t want a charade, a song and dance, a car salesman "let me talk with my manager" posturing, they just want to get on with it.

Benjamin – well said and in a way only a practitioner can. I honestly believe what I write about is really the opposite of anarchy. I preach adherence to a set of sound business practices. Anarchy is what currently prevails in real estate. A million people doing it themselves, their own way, through marketing, sales and customer service techniques that defy logic and are, in many cases, contrary to what their own companies provide and preach. It’s sad, disparaging and ultimately, each individual agent anarchist, doing whatever they feel like doing, only serves to hurt the entire industry as well as the commission structure that sits like a 100-foot dead tree on the front of someone’s lawn.

Keep on teaching, Benjamin. Keep on trying. Don’t lose faith. There are great ones out there that aren’t like what you describe. Our purpose, you and I, is to continue on, marching through the dark to find the points of light. As you probably know, they make your job and mine worth it.

-Davison