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Well this is the first blog entry that I have ever made so bare with me this is a learning process for me also, so here we go. The first topic of my first blog will be how technology has and continues to change the profession of real estate. For myself the son of a real estate agent then real estate broker who owned her on company I have had the pleasure of watching the industry grow from a little boy until now. Over the years I can remember there being no internet to now where statistics say 87% of real estate sells start on the internet. Times have changed over the years and realtors have done there best to keep up. While my mother now knows how to turn on a computer and check her email she is still one of the group of real estate agents that were successful before the age of computers and doesn't want to change. She has her website and it is maintained very well, but the new breed of younger realtors has to be ultra aggressive in their marketing of themselves and their properties on the internet.
The tools of the internet that are available to realtors to use has become vast and overwhelming at times. Our teams tries to stay on the cutting edge of what is out there by learning of the new products at conferences and trade shows. We currently have multiple websites, use visual tours, have centralized showing service (which has an online journal of activity on your property), facebook pages, use craigs list, email drip campaigns, and countless other services to stay up with the times. I was told constantly that the first showing of a house is no longer at the house but through the visual tour and pictures available to customers on the internet. That being said realtors the old adage of realtors always with their phone stuck to their ear has now been replaced by the "new age" realtor with a lap top or pda in their had checking their email or texting.
All the services that are now available to the customers has made the modern home buyer/seller extremely knowledgeable which has helped the industry also. Customers now have access to many pages that will research what your looking for and will give you countless information on everything from price to school zoning. The easy of getting public records off the computer now makes it easy for people to check how much the house down the street sold for and what their's is worth. While many realtors feel that all this knowledge has hurt the real estate market, I on the other hand believe that it has made the realtors step up there game so to speak. It has made the realtors also become more knowledgeable knowing that the customer probably knows just as much or more about the houses than they do. It has also made them start to enhance their knowledge of computers and embrace them.
I hope this blog wasn't to painful to have to read, like I said this is also a learning process for me and will get better. To wrap up my first blog I want to say thank you to my mother for helping me along the way and giving me so much knowledge in this field.
