The Signs of Change

Nothing I hate more than to have to admit that I am getting older. But it’s hard to deny it when you can readily remember the time before computers, before cell phones, even before fax machines. Yikes! I actually learned to type on a typewriter.  Imagine that?

So “back in the day"—like my children love to say—there was a time when realtors got an updated MLS book just once a week and we would print a daily “hot sheet” from an old-style computer that had just a keyboard attached to a dot matrix printer. With a few commands, it would spit out any changes for the day. No screens or pictures, nothing fancy at all.

It was all pretty basic. So we went to weekly sales meetings to hear about new listings and price changes, we got tons of fliers delivered to our offices and we went on weekly caravans to see properties because it was the only way to stay connected. We used our trusty Thomas Guide to find the homes because only submarines and airplanes had GPS.

Fast forward 26 years and it’s literally like going from the Flintstones to the Jetsons! Not only do realtors have all this technology at our finger tips, so do our clients. New listings, price changes, sales, and updates are posted to the MLS within minutes. You can pull them up on your smartphone and access the information right on the curb in front of the house if necessary. Contracts are all filled out on line instead of hand-written, then emailed, printed, signed, scanned and emailed again.

Buyers and sellers can access MLS information for any city anywhere almost as easily as we can. The internet has made clients much more savvy and informed.  They can check out neighborhoods, shop for loans and even choose the agent they want to use all without ever leaving their home or office.

Gone are the days of presenting an offer in person, then sitting in your car sweating bullets while the listing agent worked with the sellers on their response.

Gone are the days of having to take actual printed photographs for a brochure or calling every listing to verify the availability before you went to show it.

Gone are the days of driving buyers around to see hundreds of houses that they really didn’t like but couldn’t see any other way.

Here are the days where we can work so much smarter and efficiently and all thanks to technology. Computers and the internet have opened up doors for the average homebuyer and seller making it much easier for them to be informed and it’s made it easier for agents to get good accurate information quickly and efficiently.

But even with all this change in technology, a few things haven’t changed at all. One of the most important things of course—great personalized service. A realtor still provides a critical service in the relationship they build with their clients, helping them gain access to the information they need, understand it, and then use it to make the best decisions. The dedicated realtor serves their clients by negotiating the best deal, recommending outside services, explaining the process and facilitating their move.  And perhaps most importantly, the realtor keeps everything running smoothly when invariably the sale/listing/escrow hits a little “bump” in the road. 

And so far, I can’t see any computer program being written to replace that!