Opinion: How Real Estate Will Come Back Stronger – HousingWire

The latest turmoil feels like our world has been turned upside down again. But underneath all the anger, I see a real opportunity for us to turn this into a positive and come back stronger than ever. I often think of the phrase “Anti-fragile” from Nassim Taleb's book of the same name. The principle is that people and organizations can build their success on being able to bounce back even stronger after a fall, rather than just succumbing to impact. This is the moment when real estate becomes even more fragile.

Own our value

Almost as soon as the verdict was announced, most major industry voices spoke about marketing campaigns and how agents can demonstrate their value. While this is all a helpful start to the new normal, we don't need to demonstrate our worth. We should have it too. Now that we need a signed contract with our buyers before we take them on tours, we have an earlier opportunity to talk to them at length and sell ourselves. I guess these “buyer presentations” will have as much depth to them as our listing presentations. This means we need to have more marketing materials and visible evidence of our achievements that attract buyers. However, we cannot run the risk of others taking these materials and using them for marketing purposes. Whether it's researching soon-to-be homes or hard-earned tips and tricks for navigating the market, it's time to embrace the digital tools that empower each of us to have deep knowledge of our markets.

Clarify our approach

As independent contractors, we must constantly refine and improve our approach. I often tell my agents that we are the swiss army knife of real estate because we have so many different skills. With such a variety of skills comes the need for a variety of tools, but I feel like we're dealing with too many technology platforms and software. We need to lighten the load while keeping up with the level of professionalism that other industries set for their clients. Our differentiator should no longer be the latest shiny app, but one that shows our customers that we bring higher standards to protect every step of their digital-based operation.

Strategic CRMs

We can also be more strategic in how we use our marketing materials. Before the digital era, we had an idea of ​​how much they resonated with customers because we were often there when some of our potential customers were looking at them. Now that so much is being sent digitally, we need tools that give us deeper, more detailed information about how others are interacting with them. We can choose tools that show whether they're downloading the stuff we post, passing it on to others (and to whom), and whether they're spending more than average time looking at specific sections of our websites that show what they're interested in. All of these analytics give us a fuller, more three-dimensional view of what our customers are thinking, which gives us stronger insights into how we can respond to their needs.

There have always been big changes and we've always responded and adapted in ways that make us stronger. With digital tools, we can build our way to a leaner profile, so we're not only resilient, we're immune to all the ways people outside of the real estate industry try to diminish us.

Allen Alishahi He is the president and co-founder of ShelterZoom.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of HousingWire's editorial department or its owners.

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