Can the Realtor survive in the Real Estate Industry? First, let’s be certain to understand the separation between the two. The Real Estate Industry will undoubtedly survive.
It’s a world wide financial staple. A monster creating enormous stability or significant turmoil for all the world’s economy. For experts to log, digitize, interpret and attempt to forecast. And as we are all witness, the monster can rise up and create havoc. When provoked or taken advantage of the monster will devour anything that has any financial significance until it is satisfied. It would seem that the only thing it can’t, or hasn’t been able to gobble up are dinosaurs.Â
Let me take us back to 1990. Richard Gere is making billion dollar deals on his Motorola DynaTac 8000 as take over artist Edward Lewis in “Pretty Woman”. Realtors in 1990 were still running around with MLS books acquired monthly from the local Board of Realtors. While the rest of the industrialized world zooms ahead hungry for the latest and greatest communications technology available, Realtors were content grazing in the old fields of telephone book listings and microfiche. Like dinosaurs, fighting the evolution, but always keeping the monster insight.
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Edward Lewis bought and sold companies. The companies typically had lots of real estate which he liked to break apart and sell in pieces. That segment of the Real Estate industry survives. The DynaTac 8000 gave way to newer more efficient technologies and didn’t survive. The dinosaurs however did.
Jump ahead with me to 1992. Jack Lemmon, Al Pacino, Ed Harris and Alan Arkin are land sales reps based in Chicago. “Glengary GlenRoss” depicted what surely was a glimpse into real estate offices all across the country. Realtors using office phones to cold call and out of touch with technology. The difference was that these guys had to call to survive. They had no cutting edge technology, no cell phones, just a script and a list of phone numbers. They were portrayed as dinosaurs on the verge of extinction. In 1992 real life Real Estate guru’s were selling 3 day coaching seminars on how to cold call and were getting wealthy doing it. Although “Glengary GlenRoss” is history, incredibly the dinosaurs survive.
Still cold calling or just grazing waiting for an unsuspecting prey to happen by. They seem to find enough people willing to feed them and so they survive. Brokers all across the nation are still willing to take on the liability of anyone with a pulse and a license. That being the only real requirement, we have a nation of self professed real estate experts and professionals. The dinosaur survives because Brokers are either wired wrong or not wired enough. Most can’t tell an asset from a liability and don’t care to.  Â
One more leap onto the blazing track of technology. It’s November 2001 and we can check out Keifer Sutherland as Jack Bauer, CTU field operative in “24″. With his hand held device, Â he calls techie Chloe O’brian at CTU headquarters and asks for the schematics of an office building in downtown L.A. to be wirelessly sent to him. The technology here is based on reality. The communications, real. Many of today’s hand held devices all have some ability to network and to access the Internet. Realtors carry these devices, after all everyone has a cell phone. Many can do little more than answer it. Of course it’s not necessary to know how to download schematics. However Realtors have an uncanny ability to continue to survive even with a Glengary mentality.
As long as Brokers are willing to feed them, the dinosaurs will survive. Oh they may go away until the monster is satisfied and the grazing gets easier but they always seem to survive. Â
Good article. I am real estate agent and I was an agent when we used the book and the microfiche. Then the office got “1″ computer.
Moving forward 15 years, I love technology, I use it fairly well. I treat it as a tool for efficiency.
But I contribute a lot of my success to the skills I developed during my cold calling days. Now I was only interested in people that were moving and not selling land.
I find one of the real skills is moving people through the process and it is really a leadership skill that makes the “Real Professional” Families go through a lot of difficult situations and usually there is a piece of real estate tied to it. To move a family through a difficult period and work with honor and integrity and making a profit is a true craft. Most do not do it well.
So the way I see it is that those basic skills of the dinosaurs are basic life skills. Being able to set an appointment with someone is like blood flowing or breathing, without it you are dead. Or you could go on life support and pay a third party for the business and become a pet in a zoo. I prefer to roam the earth proud and strong.
Rob thanks for the comment. I appreciate it. I love your web site. Being here in South Florida we don’t get to enjoy the mountains and landscapes that you do. My frustrations with the industry is ongoing. I could relate story after agonizing story on a day to day basis about real experiences involving other Realtors that sometimes seem almost surreal. Even since I’d posted this article, in a few short days I have 2 brand new, mind boggling, time wasting, client upsetting involvements with 2 different Realtors and another with a self proclaimed “mortgage professional. I won’t bore you with details. From where I sit the Real Estate Industry can be better without them but in 8 of 10 experiences they turn up. So you keep on developing and moving. Just be careful of those Dinosaurs that don’t.