Nearly everything in our lives has migrated online over the past decade. We shop online, read books on our tablets and stream movies through Netflix. We book flights ourselves and rent cars from an app on our phone. Handshakes have given way to email and Facebook ‘likes.’
The world has undoubtedly changed, but relics of our old lives remain.
This is especially apparent in real estate with the prevalence of documents, whether deadwood or digital attachments. Real estate professionals must close the gap – to succeed in an industry where human connections and experiences now matter more than ever.
More of the Same Won’t Cut It
Think back to how agents and clients closed deals in the past. The buyer and seller would meet with their agents to negotiate until they either reached a deal, or didn’t. If they reached a deal, they would shake hands and then document it. Over time, however, the document became the meeting place. It was scanned, mailed and inefficiently tossed back and forth to close a deal. Layer on the past 30 years of digital innovations, from the fax machine and scanners to email and Google Hangouts, and our industry is left with a convoluted mesh of yesterday’s technologies that solve yesterday’s problems.