At last weekend’s 2007 Sutton Broker’s conference I was discussing Real Estate 2.0 with a few of our brokers. A lot of them were curious about the buzz but didn’t have the slightest idea of what it is all about. This post is an introduction to trends going on with real estate on the web.
An important thing to keep in mind is the generational gap between brokers, agents and the real estate customer because this has a huge impact on RE 2.0 acceptance. A lot of brokers and agents are Baby Boomers. In contrast many new home buyers are Generation X and Generation Y.
So this is the tip of Real Estate 2.0:
- Blogging
- Social Networking
- Open data
- Mash ups
Let’s start with what is blogging or what is a blog?
From the Wordpress Docs:
“Blog” is an abbreviated version of “weblog,” which is a term used to describe web sites that maintain an ongoing chronicle of information. A blog is a frequently updated, personal website featuring diary-type commentary and links to articles on other Web sites. Blogs range from the personal to the political, and can focus on one narrow subject or a whole range of subjects.
Essentially it is content written on specific topics displayed in chronological order usually newest to oldest. Blogs are valuable because they are an easy and inexpensive way to build your reputation and identity online. Reputation is what people say about you. And they are talking online. The web has grown into a social tool.
Social networking refers to people having social interactions online. Real estate has always been a people business and the web allows people to interact more quickly and efficiently. The value here is that you can maintain good relationships with many more clients with a lot less time.
By leveraging social networking tools like blogs, FaceBook, MySpace, LinkedIn and participating in online communities like Yahoo! Answers your expertise and your reputation can let you interact with more people which directly equates to more business. As a further benefit by investing in your online identity it will generate business for you while you sleep.
The next part of Real Estate 2.0 is opening up the listing data. This is a controversial subject for many brokers and agents. Protecting listing data has traditionally been synonymous with the preservation of livelihood. This thinking has become outdated. The industry’s mls.ca already has most of the listings in Canada available online all the time. The data is already out there so the value of real estate agents as gateways to listings is already gone. There is more value to the industry as a whole by opening up the listing data.
Making the data available encourages others to use it on their websites and applications. This directly increase the exposure of an agent’s listings. The more eyeballs that see a listing the quicker it will sell. Free marketing, where’s the downside?
Opening up the listing data also encourage mash ups. Tools and data from different websites mixed together to form a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Anytime you see a real estate listing sitting on a Google map you’re looking at a mash up.
This is important because the cost of building something big and complex like listings on a map becomes simple and affordable. By commodifying these things even a teenager can build something that would have cost millions a few years ago. The result is more eyeballs and more free marketing for your listings.
This post just scratches the surface of Real Estate 2.0. The new ideas of sharing, online reputation and identity management do challenge the traditional thinking of real estate marketing. The key thing brokers ought to know is that Gen X and Gen Y is growing up. We’re getting married, having kids and beginning to buy and upgrade our homes. We think in Real Estate 2.0 terms so it is frustrating for us to operate on Real Estate 1.0.
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