It's a great question to be asking in modern times with technology making our lives more empowered and efficient. Back when travel agents existed, they had a monopoly on the process of finding hotels, booking airline tickets, car rentals, etc. This monopoly existed because they had technology the consumer did not have and thus added value to the process of booking travel.
Along comes Travelocity which provided the same technology travel agents had to consumers and the bye bye travel agent. Pick any shopping experience (travel, real estate, etc.) and the consumer will think they can do a better job than the professionals (travel agents, real estate agents, etc.) This is why such websites as Travelocity.com, Realtor.com, Zillow.com, etc are so popular.
In real estate, there is one technology the Realtors are trying to hang on to its monopoly status and that is the Multiple Listing Service, which is a database of homes listed for sale. Perhaps a more appropriately name would be a Sellers Listing Service (SLS). The MLS is limited by only showing those homes for sale that the owners have hired a real estate agent to input their home into their database. To generalize the nation, the inventory in the MLS is only about 5% of the total inventory in any given neighborhood. So this MLS technology is really limiting the home shopper to a very small selection of homes in any given neighborhood.
Up until now, a home buyer was limited to what their Realtors could find in the MLS for sale, or what the consumer could find by searching on Zillow.com, Realtor.com, etc. A Buyers Listing Service (BLS) enables the home buyer to let everyone in the neighborhood know what type of home they want to purchase. When a home buyer (or a Realtor acting on their behalf), selects a neighborhood and post their wish list in a home they want to buy, both home owners and real estate agents representing sellers will see this buyers listing and contact them if they want to sell them their home. Having access to a Buyers Listing Service makes finding a home to buy just got a lot easier. Buyers Listing Services are free to the consumer just like Travelocity.com is free to use.
So will this lead to the extinction of real estate agents? Most likely not, คอนโด real estate agents still add value to the home buying process even if the consumer finds the home on their own. Once a home buyer connects with the seller of a matching home a real estate agent can still add value to the process in ensuring all proper disclosures, inspections, title transfer, escrow funding, etc. is completed correctly. Those are steps neither the sellers listing services or the buyers listing service will be able to provide.
ไม่มีความคิดเห็น:
แสดงความคิดเห็น