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I wrote a while ago that real estate agents should start
looking into the future. I remember the
days when some people refused to carry a cell phone. Look today where we are…. even
a 7 year old child carries and owns a cell phone. People are even becoming
phobic without their cell phones, like it is their life line. What did we ever
do before cell phones?
I don’t know if this is good or bad nor care to criticize,
but what is important is that I have noticed a change in the way people are
marketing property to one another, that is probably as significant as the cell
phones. Because it connects people instantly and only people that wish to be
connected to each other in this communication medium. Like the cell phones.
Yes, I am talking about the social networks and the move
into social networking in the property space. Just like with cell phones, when
I speak to agents about social networking, they look to me like I just arrived
from some remote planet. This makes me seriously wonder...
Could today a real estate agent sell properties successfully
without a cell phone? Could they compete without a cell phone? Not very likely.
But this story has just gone further recently… much further.
Now, I no longer feel like a stranger from a foreign planet, because one of the
biggest property sites Private Property just enabled Facebook functionality. So
if a person wants to share a property they can via their news feed.
I wrote in the past, that such moves can have major
significance as to how we will market property in the future. Now with the move
of Private Property into the Facebook space, I think that the future is pretty
clear.
To me it was clear from the beginning. What surprised me was
the speed at which Private Property did this. Taking into consideration that in
many ways the South Africa property market is very conventional and laggard,
set in its’ ways, and not as many people
yet use Facebook and other social networking sites to communicate. But I did
hear that some 250,000 new people worldwide are joining Facebook on a monthly
basis. If you do the maths, you reach staggering numbers in just one year without even mentioning that there are already some 65 million people on Facebook since 2004.
Nonetheless I think it gives a glimpse into the future.
Will we be all selling properties via social networks in the
future?
Will we even need agents when a property can be shared to 500,000
people on Facebook and another 200,000 on other social networking sites…..by
the click of a button?
Will real estate agents all have their networks on Facebook
and other social networking sites to sell properties?
How will they gain more clients if the clients are selling
their properties via social networks with the help of sites like Private
Property?
Will the real estate agents that have the biggest social
media networks have the success and the rest left behind?
How will real estate agent secure their due commission for a
sale when social networks are viral?
If you think such questions are far reaching, maybe they
are, but how will we react and what will we do when such situations become
reality? I think I have asked this in my previous post .
Should we as Real Estate agents even react, rather than have
a social media plan that suits our business before it is too late?
I definitely don’t know the answers to all the questions.
But I have a pretty good idea that the future is about to change [big time] and
the “cheese” will move for Real Estate agents pretty soon and when it does,
like with everything else on the internet, it will be fast and furious.
And if you want to hear (not read) more about this, you may want to visit www.PropertyNewsBlog.co.za.
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