Yesterday I realized how much the Real Estate Industry has changed in a decade. I was in the office doing some new year clean up and opened up my 'junk drawer' I saw a recipe box I have not opened in years. Inside I found 100's of pictures of listings, some rolls of film and even a few floppy disks. Some of my co workers that started a few years after I did had a good laugh at my old stuff. In 1999 when I started we took pictures of homes and had the film developed! We would send 1 picture to the real estate board to upload to the mls site. The other pictures we would paste onto photo boards and hang up in the office. When I started we all shared a few computers, it wasnt til years later that we all started to get our own. We had catalogues that arrived every week from the real estate board with all the listings. Buyers would come in and ask for a catalogue when they wanted to know what was for sale. We all had pagers and when we got paged to call a client we had to get to a phone to return the call. I dont think everyone had a cell phone at that point, maybe they did, I don't remember. I know that I went about 6 months as a Realtor before I actually got a cell phone. For many years we all had pagers and cell phones...then finally text messages came along and most of us got rid of the pagers!
Also in that recipe box I found a handwritten photocopied list of names, phone numbers and fax numbers of realtors I took my final course with in Vancouver in 1999.
At the end of the course we passed the paper around and wrote our names on it so we could stay in touch, but there were no email addresses on that sheet! not one of us had an email address or if we did we did not even think of writing it down.
What I find crazy is that I am not talking about 30 years ago, or even 20 years ago. 10 years, thats it.
In 10 years the technological changes have been unreal and they are a big part of what I think makes the job fun.
Most Realtors now use a program called PCS, basically you give your realtor your email address and house searching criteria and instead of going through realtor.ca or other sites every day looking for new listings, this program will automatically email you when a new listing comes up or a home price is reduced into your price range.
Yesterday after looking at my recipe box full of ancient old fashioned 35mm pictures I realized just how important pictures really are when it comes to selling your house. Stats show over 80% of buyers decide whether or not to make an appointment to see a home based on information they have seen online ( usually from realtor.ca which is the website almost all Realtors post their listings too) The more pictures and the better the quality of picture the better chance a buyer can get a good idea if its a house they may like. We now have the option of uploading slideshows, 20+ pictures and virtual tours to our listings. Virtual tours are nothing new, in fact in the larger city centres my guess is almost every realtor uses them. In Campbell River they have been around for a while but not many people use them.
I am now offering virtual tours as part of my marketing package to Campbell River sellers. Virtual tours will not only help a seller to professionally showcase their home, but I think they will help to ensure that sellers are being inconvenienced by cleaning up and having to vacate for showings only when its a serious buyer, not a buyer that will walk in and say " I dont like this layout'
So here I sit on hold with telus on my blackberry, typing on one computer about to forward to my laptop so I can finish in the other room. In a moment with a few clicks I will upload to my blog and then post to facebook. Maybe one day I will get with it and also tweet about it, but for now this will do.
