The media will be reporting a lot in the next weeks and months, as the Canadian mls system undergoes substantive changes, with material offered by the Real Estate Boards promotional/marketing wing as to why a real estate agent is essential to a property transaction.
I do believe that a real estate agent is vital to a successful property transaction between a seller and a buyer, but not for the reasons that were once the case.
The entire world has changed, and all business models, including real estate sales, have correspondingly altered...and, "forever".
Since 1995/6, I believe we've been in a transition mode and it has been due to the impact of the internet.
Back in the 1970s, Marshall McLuhan wrote a book (The Gutenberg Galaxy), and reminded us of the huge shift, societally, with the invention of the printing press.
Suddenly, the scribes were out of business, as the dissemination of information could be spread very easily. No more painstaking hand lettered and time-consuming one-off documents. Errors due to copying one document to create one other document were done away with.
Thousands of books could be printed off, and suddenly any person able to read and write could partake of knowledge. The "expert" information was no longer under the protection and dissemination of one group or person.
The result of this was the Renaissance and the birth of humanism, of individualism. Big stuff! Certainly, a profound societal, political, personal shift.
Many ways of life tied to the old order/pre-printing press revolution did pass away. New things came into being. Always thus, then....
So, perhaps from 1996, let's say, to 2008, we've been in a transition phase after another life-altering archtypal "shift".
Marshall McLuhan alerted us, back in the 70s, that "the medium is the message". We are shaped by our technology. It creates our culture.
He also alerted us to the power of this new medium of information dissemination: it shrinks our physical world and creates a "global village".
The internet has erased time, geography, gender, age, race...it is about intellect to intellect, thought to thought.
The binary world is one that has erased our concept of a "grey territory". The binary rhythm is on/off, on/off. Action/reaction, action/reaction. Responses to events are instant.
In the digital age, which is "always on", time being erased, we are awash in raw data, all seemingly evenly weighted.
Personally, I think what needs to be exercised is our editing function. When we can discern what it is we need to know, and pay attention to it, verify it, critique it, we can turn it into information.
There's the real role of a real estate agent, then. We are interpreters of data.
In this age of "no time", I think people will need, more than ever, interpreters to process data and to bring forward information that can then be acted upon by the consumer.
Everyone is way too busy (another offshoot of a timeless world?) to be wading through the pool of raw data, looking for what it is they "really" want.
Oh yes...the consumer. The other profound thing the internet did was to break down that expert/follower model. We are all experts now.
In real estate, we went from a company-centric model (50s, 60s), to an agent-centric business model (mid-70s to 1996), and we thought during the transition period of 1996 to 2008 that it was just more biz as usual, with a little tweaking here and there. Not!
The internet revolution made the consumer the focus, and in a sales situation that means the realtor cannot "push" information at the consumer; the realtor needs to "pull" the consumer forward, before delivering the message.
Technology is exploding so quickly, platforms to deliver information are constantly evolving, and pretty soon we will be able to "do it all" from the gizmo in our hand (I, for one, can't wait! Next year, maybe?).
We are just emerging from the transition moment. Real estate as an industry is and will continue to be profoundly changed.
Social media marketing is the powerhouse, right now, to allow the connection with a buyer or a seller. It will be something else, and soon, too, as it's a timeless/time absent world, remember.
They are all just methods of information dissemination...books, kindles, i-pads, blackberrys, androids, i-phones...doesn't matter what the hardware is! It's just the vehicle that delivers the point of it all -- it's about the content that is carried on that technology.
There we are, back at the beginning...a realtor is an interpreter, able to make sense of the content that a consumer is seeking. The rest is just smoke and mirrors, the buzz of the moment....
Wait, we didn't even get into virtual worlds, yet. Yes, you can buy property in a mythic universe!
Aren't we lucky to be around right now? In change lies opportunity.
And your thoughts are? Always welcome!
How may I help you to discover special Salt Spring Island & the Southern Gulf Islands? Call me!
