Age, Music and Real Estate

Age is a frame of mind.

I am sure you have heard something like that before.  I know people in their 80′s who get around better than some people in their 50′s.  Maybe even better than some young people.  And they are smart, engaged and sharp as a tack.

Skill.  Determination. Advocacy.  Technology.  Experience.  Matter.

Results.  Matter.

So we are not quite a year old as a brokerage and we have 21 smart, experienced, skilled, trained, determined agents with over a hundred years of collective experience in Real Estate.

With age comes experience.  Some of that experience can really help you.  Some of it can stand in your way.  I think it is important that you are eager to learn.  Explore.  Experiment.

Things don’t happen if you keep doing the same thing(s) you’ve been doing forever.  You have to push forward.  Things change.  Upset the status quo.  There are lots of people and businesses who want to keep doing the same things.

Look at the music industry.  For years they enjoyed large profits by selling you the record, then the tape (maybe an 8-track for some of us), then the CD.  The MP3 upset all of that.  No longer could they sell you the whole ‘album’.  I really bought the same ‘record’ 3 times and paid over and over for the same music.  Strike that, I bought the ‘album’ on iTunes also, so that makes it 4 times.

So the music industry in my mind is the precursor to the real estate industry.  Brokers can’t expect to keep charging the same high percentages to sell homes.  Clients want to carve that up, much like the mp3 carved up the record album.  Clients want it their way on their terms.   We as real estate professionals need to find those areas where we can help them get their property sold.

Too often the real estate business acts like the ‘gatekeeper’ that the music industry once was.  That still works in some markets where larger brokerages dominate the listings.  Clients still use these larger brokers because they think they have to.  Clients think they have to go through the gatekeeper to get to the buyers.  But it is less and less relevant these days.  Buyers and sellers can now connect together much more easily.  It is a slow evolution, not a revolution – at least not yet.

The world is changing.  Faster than ever before.  There is a lot of uncertainty.  Does anybody really think the real estate business in 5 years will look exactly the same as it today?

Photo credit laRuth via flickr.com