Are real estate agents an endangered species, in a world where you can take a virtual tour of your home and buy it online?
In the new world we will no longer need intermediaries
Photography:
envato elements
Produced by the Department of Special Supplements
Two years ago I went to a big real estate conference in New Orleans.
Wow, what a city this is!
A mesmerizing atmosphere of music and alcohol, masks and mystery, food from the movies and a carnival in every corner.
I suggest you mark this point on the map and get there in the middle of the week, at the beginning of the month of Mardi Gras.
Do not forget the green vaccine book.
Then came the fall.
The city picked me up, and the conference knocked me down.
There I realized who the weak link is, where I understood who the technology is going to devour.
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It immediately made me deja vu.
In 2006, following the big bang of Yad2, I was summoned to a meeting at Israel's leading newspaper for brainstorming.
They were debating how to integrate the online bulletin board into the printed board.
After all the dignitaries had expressed their views, I quietly told them, "The printed board is now inflating its last breaths, and I suggest you perform euthanasia for it."
History is known…
It is very difficult for us to give up someone or something that was good to us.
It's hard for us to change a business model that still works and bet on the next thing.
At that conference in New Orleans, I blocked the real estate network.
There I realized that realtors and apartment marketers must look for a new home, adopt advanced working methods and fly on the waves of technology, which very soon will make us all buy and rent apartments online.
Do you understand why I'm optimistic?
In the new world we will not have to call a realtor who pays half of his income to the real estate agency, who pays half of his income to a real estate network, who pays half of his income to the real estate network in America.
In the new world we would not have to see engineered pictures and read mesmerizing descriptions of neglected apartments, and then travel to see 20 apartments in different and strange places, most of which we would have immediately ruled out if we could tour them from a distance.
The new world will not be Pike!
He's just going to be What You See Is What You Get.
In this world we can see really (but really) the area and the neighborhood, enter the building, walk around the lobby, take the elevator to the parking lot, go back up and see the apartments we love, walk around the rooms and see the real view from every window.
Then, at the push of a button, we fly to the next building, until we find the apartment of our dreams.
Tell me it's not a dream.
I'm sure you're optimistic now, too.
Produced by the Department of Special Supplements
