Last week I had lunch with another broker to discuss our local real estate market, but also to share thoughts and ideas about the future of real estate as an industry. Wade Sonenberg of The Sonenberg Company is a second generation real estate agent and his father, David, is on the cover of latest issue of REALTOR Magazine. Wade and I both grew up with real estate in our family, but more importantly we grew up in the technology and information era. Our conversation focused on how we can use technology and information to better enhance real estate.
Just the fact that two competitive brokerage firms are having lunch to discuss the future of real estate is a step in the right direction. The old way to do business in the real estate industry (real estate 1.0) was very cut-throat and brokers competed for every client, listing, and sale and their hopes for success hinged on not sharing information freely. I feel the new way to do business in the real estate industry (real estate 2.0) is to share information freely with everyone. Whether it’s general market information, specific property details, or sharing ideas to improve business with competiting broker, information should be free and free-flowing.
Technology should be a tool to help facilitate the sharing of information. This blog is a great example of how I use technology to improve communication and information to clients, brokers and the general public. Wade Sonenberg has started an online real estate forum to share info about the Atlanta commercial real estate market. It does not matter if these tools are succesful in changing the way we do real estate. What matters is the fact that we are trying and thinking of ways to try to make things better.
WebHomeUSABlog recently wrote about real estate 1.0 vs real estate 2.0 …
Real Estate 1.0, the NAR, Realtor.com, and MLS-Friendly Search are all about Big Real Estate, Big Brokers, hard sell, withhold data until you get the information. House first, ads second and home buyer third. Real Estate 2.0, Real Estate Search 2.0 and Real Estate Search Marketing 2.0, Google and Zillow are all about open data, open communication, contextual ads, and free content. Just where and when are these twains meeting?
I know that two local real estate companies (Maxsell Real Estate and The Sonenberg Company) are making the meeting place at Magnolia Thomas Restaurant and online at blogs and forums.
