Palo Alto Realtors Dragged Kicking And Screaming Into The Tech Age…And Continue To Do Great Business

July 20, 2007

I made it to this morning’s regular Realtor association marketing meeting to hear the speaker expound on “Sites Our Clients Are Using.” More accurately, I went to see the audience’s reaction to the talk.

You would think that, being in the heart of Silicon Valley — with the nearby Sand Hill Road venture capitalists perched conveniently near to the Stanford campus and its never-ending supply of brilliant ideas — the real estate business here would be a lot more tech-savvy.

You would be wrong. Real estate here remains very much of a traditional business, very old-school. Many of the successful local Realtors grew up here and remember when much of the Valley was orchards and fields, and when you could stand on Middlefield and see Bayshore.

Being a bit of a techie, I have a dangerous tendency to over-emphasize technology and to be frustrated at the “old school” way of doing things. For instance:

  • The speaker at this morning’s tech meeting, Matt Rohrbach of Stanford Mortgage, has a namesake in Illinois who’s a rancher — and whose name appears ahead of Matt’s in a Google search. Our local Matt Rohrbach does not appear to have a web site of his own, nor is he mentioned on Stanford Mortgage’s web site. His web presence appears to be limited to newspaper quotes.
  • Local Realtor Nancy MacLeod was held forth as an example of an early adopter. Nonetheless, her name does not appear in the top 100 when you do a Google search for Palo Alto realtor. Or Palo Alto real estate.
  • A telephone line outage in our office recently led to a mad scramble to reroute our fax machines. Fax machines? In 2007?
  • Despite my best efforts to the contrary, nobody here uses electronic signatures. Not even the relatively youthful Realtors in their 20’s and 30’s. Not even though many of their clients are very tech-savvy individuals who would love ‘em for it.
  • Many local Realtors are not familiar with Trulia. Or Zillow. Or Redfin.

But here’s the thing: Despite all this harping from me, the real estate business here continues chugging along quite nicely, thank you very much. The old school Realtors who still predominate — and the younger ones they’re mentoring — are doing just fine. They may not be using Google Adwords. They may not have a blog. They may not place well in Google organic searches. They may have never even heard of Facebook (gasp!) But…They’re continuing to get referrals. They’re continuing to close transactions. They continue to have their fingers on the pulse of the business. They remain shrewd negotiators. They’re respected in the community. They’re making great money. Life is good!

I wonder when the time will come where not being abreast of technology will begin to hurt people’s business? I suspect that time is further off than people like myself might think. If you’re a 55-year old Realtor, doing quite well, and want to just run out the clock till you retire at 60 or 65, you’ll probably make it, and continue to do quite well at it.

What about if you’re 45, however? 35? 25?

P.S. Gregg Swann will be happy to know that one of his iPhone posts was part of the handout from this morning’s meeting!

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Written by Kevin · Filed Under Palo Alto, Real estate 

Comments

8 Responses to “Palo Alto Realtors Dragged Kicking And Screaming Into The Tech Age…And Continue To Do Great Business”

  1. Josh Hohman on July 20th, 2007 11:46 am

    Kevin,

    Your post rings so true for me. The lack of technology adoption is a large part of the reason why I decided to get my broker’s license to process my own investment transactions. Most agents I’ve come across could not even navigate MLS to my satisfaction when I asked for a list of properties with a low $/sf for a given area, let alone do anything like run any statistical regression analysis to tell me how much an extra bedroom should be worth in my market. I realize the importance of personal relationships in our business, but I view the soft skills as a way to get a foot in the door. Value to clients comes from the ability to use technology effectively to help them reach their goals, and save money in the process.

    Congrats on being a panelist at the upcoming Real Estate Connect conference in San Francisco!

    -Josh
    http://www.BayAreaREI.com

  2. Chris Iverson on July 20th, 2007 2:48 pm

    Kevin -
    I was there in the peanut gallery as well, and had a couple of observations.

    1) Matt was saying “send your clients to these cool websites”, not that agents should offer these tools for their clients.

    2) I’m still wondering what makes Homes2Buy.com to cutting edge. The hats?

    3) ***The role and value of a Realtor is Changing***. We don’t find houese for people anymore, they can find listings, school information, appreciation rates, etc. The value a Realtor brings is in contract knowledge, contract management and risk management. Funny, those are why you hire an attorney. Maybe it isn’t such a coincidence that there are approximately as many attorneys as real estate agents in California. . .

  3. Lani on July 20th, 2007 3:11 pm

    All great points. I would add that a majority of the industry isn’t fighting change, rather they’ve been left behind completely oblivious to wth is going on. It’s not intentional, it’s ignorance (and boy is it blissful)!

    Sidenote: ignorance doesn’t mean stupidity.

  4. Sock Puppet on July 20th, 2007 4:07 pm

    It’s fine for these guys now, but eventually the momentum will peter out for them. They will just never understand why either.

  5. The Feed Bag on July 20th, 2007 4:22 pm

    [...] Kevin Boer lives in the epicenter of the tech world, so wonders why bizarro real estate practices rule the day there. Palo Alto Realtors Dragged Kicking And Screaming Into The Tech Age…And Continue To Do Great B… [...]

  6. Ravi Karandeekar on July 21st, 2007 4:29 am

    Hello Kevin, is it like this,… really? If this is true, then how come you are so different? I will always remember your post about ’selling property on the net’ and zooming into top10 on Google like a ‘Batman’. You know, that post set my goals. I am sure, i am not the only one, there must be few more in Palo Alto. Thanks a lot.

  7. Realtors and Technology - Who benefits? on July 21st, 2007 7:45 am

    [...] RSS ← Palo Alto Realtors Dragged Kicking And Screaming Into The Tech Age…And Continue To Do Great Bu… [...]

  8. Breaking News — The Internet Has Crashed — All 3Oceans Real Estate Deals On Hold; Traditional Palo Alto Realtors Ecstatic on July 22nd, 2007 2:36 pm

    [...] Traditional Palo Alto Realtors whom he pilloried in a recent article, however, were ecstatic. “Now I can breathe easier,” said one of them, “without having to worry about driving across town to my office to check my email. I no longer have to remember my password for this silly online MLS thing they’ve been talking about. With any luck, this week’s listings will arrive how they always used to in the good old days — a big thick, book, delivered from our local association, and then we can all crowd around it in the conference room, then call our clients and tell them about the new listings! Heck, I can probably sneak into the back room and start using that typewriter, and nobody will give me a rough time.” [...]

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