RISMEDIA, July 5, 2011—We are seeing a significant shift occurring in real estate technology that will impact our industry dramatically in the years to come. Like most shifts, it didn’t happen all at once but if you look carefully you can see the seeds of this shift many years back. Pressure builds slowly but when it reaches a critical point, changes occur quickly.
What’s Driving this Shift?
Pain and pressure! Pain and pressure is what causes most things to shift in business, or government, or even at a personal level. When things get uncomfortable, when things aren’t working anymore, when we are pushed out of our comfort zone, we change. This is what we are seeing happen today for real estate companies and their agents on the technology front. This pressure is behind what we see as a fundamental shift in how technology will be used to conduct business in real estate.
Our world today is about connections. Just like social media is about connecting people, activities, interests and influence at the speed of light, successful real estate software today needs to connect people, and data—like listings, contacts, leads, web information, sales trends, marketing information—as well as deeper external data like foreclosures, demographics and marketing lists. It has to be easy to use for non-tech savvy agents, and it has to integrate multiple business functions for brokers and agents, and it has to work everywhere, even across multiple MLSs when needed. Technology that does not provide these connections is like buying a computer without Internet access and yet much of what is being used today operates at this level. As a result, pressure is building and many brokers and agents are looking for next-level solutions.
There is another pressure driving this evolution. We believe it will impact the playing field in the broker world just like the Internet did in the MLS world in the ’90s. The change we are referring to is the migration from “brick and mortar” being the hub that brokers used to keep their agents closely tied to their companies to “technology” being the new hub that businesses are built around.
Technology will be the “new glue” of the real estate industry and it will occur because the needs are real. Broker Brands will be built around tools that serve their agents in the way they really do business today, meeting their real needs.
Click here to view the full report on the change in Real Estate technology.
Copyright © 2011 WAV Group.
