What does the future hold for real estate agents?
On our team, we talk about this question a lot, often in terms of what kind of “threats” are out there that we need to be aware of. Right now, there are two primary disruptors in our industry.
The first is technology. We don’t believe that technology will replace Realtors, but we do think that Realtors who don’t embrace it are at risk. There are plenty of tried and true ways of doing business, but if you don’t embrace technology within the next few years, you’ll get left behind. So much information is already directly available to buyers and sellers, so if you don’t know what they’re looking at or how they’re looking at it, you’re in trouble.
With that in mind, your focus should be on the consumer experience. The days of needing to register on a certain website to look at properties, for example, are long gone. We live in an age of instant information, so you need to adapt.
This brings us to the second disruptor: iBuyers. We don’t think iBuyers are as big of a threat to real estate agents as others do, because real estate is a relationship-based business. People buy homes in places where they plan on raising their families, and they want to deal with someone who understands them and actually cares how their transaction ends up.
The value we bring is relational, and we need to fight to ensure that nobody—not an iBuyer or a new technology—steals our SOI from us. The business was built around our SOI, and it’s still the key to maintaining a profitable business.
If you’d like to talk more about what the future holds for our business or you have any other questions we can answer for you, don’t hesitate to reach out to us. We’d love to speak to you.
