Real Estate Need Internet Renaissance

August 31st, 2010 | by: SM Sold | Posted in : Real Estate News

It’s a clich� to note that the internet has completely changed business. For big companies and small, the web has allowed businesses to be more efficient, advertise better, and scale faster. However, the impact is not uniform. While technology has revolutionized the travel, advertising, jobs and financial services, some industries still seem to be chugging along unscathed by the web revolution.

The real estate industry is one of them.  Yes, classified advertising has migrated to the web in the form of real estate search, but the sell side of real estate may be web’s biggest relative laggard.

There are several reasons why technology adoption has lagged the Real Estate brokerage industry

Brokerages compete with each other not on their differentiated offerings, but simply by bringing on more agents.  And agents are typically attracted by brand and commission split.  So as a broker, that’s where you spend your money.  Developing technology based differentiation is low on the list of priorities because brokers and agents are not technologists, and the “off the rack” options don’t fit the needs of the real estate community anyway.

The “one size doesn’t fit all” problem is particularly acute for real estate sales.  Real estate is a different beast because there are two sales that need to happen prior to closing a transaction.  First, the home owner needs to be “sold” so the agent gets the listing, and then the home buyer needs to be sold the home.  Any complete technology based selling solution needs to take into account both parts of the sales equation.