Online real estate's final frontier: The neighborhood
No: 217
Abracadabra. Your Web site has vanished.
Your blog: MIA.
HomeGain, Trulia, Zillow, ActiveRain ” all gone. As if they never existed.
You reach for your phone but there’s no dial tone.
Your computer — no Internet activity.
No e-mail. No IM. Dead calm.
Lead generation, TMS, CRM ” fond memories.
Lockboxes. Coaches. Trainers. Continuing-ed outfits. Gone.
No more “vendors” profiting inside real estate.
Through the courtesy of Fred’s two feet
It’s been water cooler talk. Now it’s taken hold in the blogosphere: The notion that real estate would be better served if vendors could be deleted from the process.
We’re not just talking about technology vendors. Conference vendors, professional services vendors, training vendors and brokers, too, should be banished — especially those who attempt to offset the cost of operations by selling things like training, education, Web sites and marketing materials
Utopia? I hardly think so.
Without vendors, real estate could be a sort of Bedrock filled with Fred Flintstones, Barneys, Wilmas and Bettys. Still door-knocking. Cold-calling. Scratching out deals on paper using wood writing devices filled with lead. Driving documents across town for $5 a gallon. Praying at the altar of the paper gods — fax and copy machines, postage clerks and file cabinets.
Agents would be viewed by consumers as glorified delivery people. Gatherers. Order takers. Desk-bound. And tied to the apron strings of convention — the archaeological dig where only the fossils of the past reside. The vendors are doing their part to correct that perception.
A ‘yabba-dabba-doo’ time
Real estate without vendors. No yadda-dadda-doo time for anyone. A prehistoric landscape void of critical tools. Agents milling wood and hand-carving stone tablets to create yard signs. Slinging paper clip darts from rubber bands to generate leads instead of paying others for Web sites, blogs or e-newsletters. Reading stars for navigation and using smoke signals for communication instead of GPS, smart phones, Twitter, live chats and other overpriced tools produced by predatory vendors.
They would be weaving local market reports with the sinew of opinion rather than fact-driven analytics ported by feeds, applications and reports assembled by vendors who provide great agents the tools to look and sound as great and modern as they are.
These are otherwise equally disturbing stereotypes cast upon vendors and how some believe they look at real estate.
Personally, I think the real estate bus is big enough for everyone. We all need each other. Because the perception is all around is incorrect. One no better than the other. One united industry.
Agents, disintermediators. Interlopers. Vendors. Outsiders. Them.
Us
– Davison