The Shifting Landscape of Real Estate

There was a time not too long ago when the main demographic target for the real estate industry was the baby boomer generation. This was the generation that valued the American dream of owning a home and looked to the expertise of a real estate agent and an ad in their daily newspaper to make that happen.

Remember those days? Yeah, me neither.

That’s because the Internet has so drastically changed the real estate landscape that it’s now hard to imagine not having the ability to quickly and easily search listings by the things most important to us. Sites like StreetEasy, Zillow and Trulia.com have literally taken power from the hands of the real estate agent and given it to you, the consumer, to make smart home-related decisions. These sites allow you to search for your next home by using keywords like “gourmet kitchen,” “swimming pool” or “deck with a view.” You can examine rental and purchase history in real time (as well as rental and purchase history for your neighbors), get instant updates when a new home or rental has hit the market or when a change in price has occurred, and refine your searches by literally anything you can thing of — price per square foot, amenities, public school zoning, commute time, etc. There are now so many new tools and such an abundance of information available online that the whole real estate game has changed. No longer are we running on 1950s-newspaper time.

As you can imagine, the role of the real estate agent is now up for debate. Some realty groups have even started to cut off listing access to Zillow and Trulia, accusing them of being inaccurate, misleading and taking away business from listing agents. It makes perfect sense though. If you’re able to do your own research and make your own informed decisions about where to rent and what to buy, why pay an agent just to show up and let you in the door?

Similarly, what was once a lucrative business for newspaper real estate classifieds is now turning into yet another blow to the already declining ad revenue sales and circulation of print media publications.

So, what have we learned today? Basically, technology accelerates markets, and in this case, for the better. Take advantage of it.