What trends will gain significant marketshare in 2019? Who will attempt to disrupt our industry? What tool should agents add to their marketing strategy? In the first episode of 2019, Reynolds share's his predictions for the industry.
What trends will gain significant marketshare in 2019? Who will attempt to disrupt our industry? What tool should agents add to their marketing strategy? In the first episode of 2019, Reynolds share's his predictions for the industry.
I was an 18 and some statistics and kind of trends and there's some, not a lot of things scare me, but I will say technology is getting really interesting in the real estate market and so I always start off with a few quotes because the future can seem kind of scary at times, but always remember that the future comes one day at a time and that I think it has something to do with tomorrow that there always is one and that everything can change when it comes. Our industry seems like it was changing every couple of months. Now it's changing like every month now, every week someone's got something new out there. You get a call from a vendor, they want you to try this platform. Um, and then it had an address. The future of vision is a clearly articulated results or in a picture of the future you intend to create. It's a dream with direction. So that always makes me kind of remember that it's a lot less to worry about in the future if you have a plan on what it is you want to do otherwise, then there's gonna be stuff flying at you all the time and it's a. well, let's just get into it because we're going to talk about that. Um, the real estate, oracle could not be with us here today. He may appear from a live video cast later, but you remember we hired the real estate oracle because his job is to see the future before it becomes obvious. So I collaborate with him on a lot of the presentation today. This has been happening for awhile. The gap in services, a real estate companies are either a walmart or they are a nordstrom. Oh, zero service, low Fi, you know, I'll list your house for$250, put on the mls and you get all the calls versus we have a relocation department that will negotiate your fees, help your clients relocate around the country. Full service brokerage firm. This has always been the norm. What has not been is the downward pressure on our industry, folks wanting to do our job for less money because of the billions of dollars in commissions that are available. So this year the gap is going to get a little water, you know, and why is that? Well, in 2018, that's when the I buyer market kind of became active as we talked about. Remember zillow offers.
Speaker 2:No,
Speaker 1:they're not. That has nothing to do with the real estate agent. No one is helping them view property or show property, but y'all are in a good position because especially in markets like ours, people still want to work with a human being. They want to speak with someone. They want to meet with someone, they want to talk with someone and that's another reason why we're really excited about our new website is because when a visitor online clicks on a company's website and then someone from that company context them immediately, there's a higher level of trust there because they're wanting to speak with someone. So remember, just so you're not confused, we're not Walmart bickerstaff parm. Nordstrom. We're full service. We go above and beyond and do things for our clients that they couldn't dream of having done for them. Direct mail, direct mail has been pushed to the side, um, for probably the last year or two because why we've been in a really good market and when we get into a good market and get busy, uh, agents stopped doing some of the basic things that they should be doing and even the car dealers do that too, right? I haven't received a six by eight power postcard from a car dealer a, and I don't know how long, but direct mail is still incredibly powerful if it's used correctly. And, um, a lot of the other real estate news industries are reporting on that is because it's still still affordable. It's very inexpensive. And when no one is, has a presence there, an agent's presence seems to be that much more powerful. So I'm not just my postcards but just notes, letters, uh, I think people will go back to look at 2015 16 and the things they did then we'll probably be a still very relevant here because as markets start to slow down, and I hate to say the word slow down, but when we stopped selling houses in a week and it takes a month or two, that is still great. But we always tend to evaluate our marketing budget and what we spend our money on to drive traffic to those homes. Cyber fraud is getting ridiculous. Who received the text message for me asking to buy some cards, right? I mean they are now texting you and they'd been emailing us for awhile. Um, they're going to then texture clients. I get how many. I have at least five or six calls a day starting the beginning of the year from some health care company or you know, the car warranty company and they've now moved on to being able to get you to send something through a text through. I mean it's just a link. So you've got to warn your clients about a potentially fraudulent activities that may occur once a transaction starts because they are there watching what we're doing. And one way to protect yourself is to get one of these security keys. And I don't know if y'all have seen these, this is Google's, it's called Titan.
Speaker 2:And
Speaker 1:is this a little. It goes into a USB drives just little key. So if you register this to your computer, you can't use your email unless this is plugged into your computer. So if you lose this, you can't use your email, but also mean someone can't hack your account in Texas and start logging into your email account. So also this is called a tightened security case. Just the one google makes it also has a little bluetooth. I'm car greater. So if you're. You can't plug a usb into your phone, but this, if this is all, and then you can use your email on your phone. This has been sitting on my desk for about a month or so. I haven't used it yet, but as real estate professionals, I think it's important to assess how you're protecting your information and your clients. You consider changing your passwords. Let security keys I think will probably be the norm where you've got sensitive information from your clients coming across and people are watching that and it's not from something you've done, but it's from something that another agent did where they don't use a mail service and they send out a group message to 400 people by just pasting all the addresses in the address bar, know somebody. Does that sit on message and say, please remove my name from this list because that's how people get hacked. The mailchimps and eye contact and other ones, there's. They're more secure than email, but it's all those group messages and so if your names included in one, you need to make sure you have some way to protect your email so that someone doesn't start hacking it. This is really cool. Has Mia use Alexa flash briefing? Who Has Alexa? Okay. Companies create flash briefings where you can sit. You have to. It's like an app you download to your Alexa and if the flash briefing was from ESPN, you'd say, Hey Alexa, what was the score of the superbowl last night? Patriot, you know, the rams beat the chief's by two touchdowns or whatever. These are prerecorded messages that people upload to an APP. So if I've downloaded the bickerstaff parm, Alexa App, and let's say it was the open house app, so like Alexa, what open houses are available this weekend to Raymond Strickland has a house on one, two, three Broadway and vibe of allison has one on Saturday. It would play that message. It's me, I recorded a message, but people download this because what they are now getting tired of scrolling through things when it's available. So if I downloaded the, um, I think apple has one, but if I downloaded the Bloomberg's stock briefing, say, Hey, blue Alexa, give me Bloomberg's tip for the day. And Bloomberg has uploaded a tip each day and it will play that tip for you. So it's just a news brief and do some research. Agents are using this in houses to promote their house. Um, there's a service that will allow you to place multiple Alexis around a model home or a vacant home and it's really weird. They'll print out the commands. So you, you're in the diamond room and say, Hey Alexa, what did the owners remodel here? And you would have recorded the mess will say, well, this was previously a ranch home with eight foot ceilings and the owner's vaulted the ceilings and installed the bay window. So agents are going to be using Alexa to help sell their homes because if each of you could be in your listing every time someone showed it, you'd probably sell it, but there's another agent there that may not have read your beautiful description or watch your video or picked up the flier you left on the counter. Or even remember the text you sent Ben to say, Hey, don't forget to show them the bay window in the kitchen and family room. Flash briefings are just prerecorded messages. Does that mix? I don't know if I explained that correctly, but everyone is tired of typing in a search. You can do that on Google now. You can do it on your apple device. I mean, y'all use Siri, use Alexa. It's the same thing. Um, and it's just interesting that they say in the next two years, um, voice commands searches one, they're already become more labile, but by 20, 21 voice command searches could equal the number of tight keyword searches. So now the number of people going in and you're on your phone, um, you know, apple store in Atlanta and it pulls up the directions. Well, you don't even do that now, right? You just press your phone and say, where's the apple store in Atlanta? And it pulls up searches, right? Voice Command searching is going to become, it's already starting to become the norm with kids. Kids just go and talk to stuff. Hey, coke come out of the machine, a car, I want a coke. Like, no, you got to put any money and press the button. You can't just voice command in the vending machine. But that's how they're learning stuff. I think you just talked to a machine and it does something. And so we've got to catch up to that. And um, I don't know if that's going to be a big trend in real estate, but it started to happen and people are exploring with it. Zoom. I heard of the Henry's, this is hilarious, but it's serious. But even like the guests, what Henry's stand for, what's that? Pretty much high earning. Not rich yet. Mainly millennials. And this is serious. They've just released this. I didn't know you. We've talked about the different demographics, not demographics, the different generations. Well now we're starting to break down the millennials. By the time we're done, they're going to have like seven different subsets of their whole job. No, I'm not. I'm a henry millennial or you know, I'm a jerry millennial just trying to get by mean if we're going to make up all kinds of stuff to describe one generation, but it's people, millennials earning$100,000 or more a year in household income and they still, that's a lot of money to earn. So they're earning good money but they're not rich yet because they don't have anything to show for it. They don't have cash to put down on the house. They're still borrowing money, but what's interesting about the Henry's is how they value luxury goods and it's not by price, they value luxury goods by first quality and then excellent reputation or recommendation. So if jen, if I asked Jen, I need to get a new car, um, you know, what's the best car to buy? And Jen says best car buys a Subaru outback and that's not the most expensive car. But what is a Subaru, jen? It is, it's reliable. It's dependable. Um, I've never seen one on the side of the road abandoned except like out west because if I had 300,000 miles on it. So I mean it does what it's supposed to and it's a quality vehicle. It's not the most expensive. So the Henry's and y'all may have already met some, you just didn't know they were at Henry's and don't call them. He's like, oh my gosh, you're a henry. Don't let them know because they probably don't know either. But it's interesting because the millennials are now 35 percent of the home buying market. They have grown up y'all. They are now 30. The oldest millennials are in their mid to late thirties. When you think about it, it's that they're here and kind of wrap this up about the future. The enemy of mastery is not mediocrity. It is distractions. The addiction to distraction is ruining many potentially awesome lives. Two thousand 18. We had a lot of distractions and they're still going to be more in 2019. And that's Kinda what makes the future scary sometimes as if you don't know what you want to accomplish. There are plenty of things to distract you along the way to prevent you from accomplishing any of them. So I want to challenge you all to be thinking about some of the things we discussed today, but also stick to your plan, the business plan that you've laid out for 19. Those are great plants. Follow those plans. Be aware of what's coming down the road and maybe how to adapt that to your plan a. study it more. Maybe it doesn't require your implementation yet, but just be aware of that because real estate is still very slow to change because it's a people business and requires us to change. But more and more companies out there trying to disrupt everything that it is we do, they're trying to get into our pocket. Zillow is trying to sell homes mean they, they truly are. And other companies are getting into that same space just because they feel they have to. One of the largest franchises is getting into I buying where they're buying properties because they feel they have to. So
Speaker 2:just no, we go back.
Speaker 1:This is the biggest thing to focus on being full service. People want an experience, they want to work with someone that can carry them all the way through and if you keep doing that, you're going to have a solid place in the future for as long as you're in the business. Because in our opinion, this is always going to hold value. It's going to be a long time before you can just walk in a place by house, talk to a machine, get alone. I mean that's probably where people eventually want it to go with blockchain and all this other technology. But I mean I haven't seen a single home does exactly the same yet and they're not. There's always going to be something different, something to get hooked up. This floor plan is similar, but not exactly the same. You've still got to have people involved in the process to make sure that it's handled properly, so we're not concerned about the future. The oracle is not concerned about the future. Don't want you all to be concerned about the future. Just wants you to be prepared for the future and what's coming down the line for us because it's going to be exciting. It's going to be a good year. It's gonna be a lot of fun and if it doesn't seem like it's as busier as successful as last year, it's just because things slow down a little bit, but we've been going at such a fast pace. Things kind of need to get slow down some, but it's still going to be a great market in Columbus and Phoenix city. It is. We don't see a whole lot of change here. Um, but if you've got concerns about the future or how you're going to prepare for it, let us know. We'll send these slides out to. But we're very optimistic about the future. Could bring some really cool stuff. Um, I'll share this with you. Uh, say say had her 20th year high school reunion on Saturday during the middle of the heavens falling out. And so a couple years, um, there. And Gosh, I'm have just cut off my meeting. Um, we were there and one of their best friends from Nashville didn't drive down because of the weather band was just going straight up there. And what's the, what's the device? Facebook has to put it in your house. The video chat. Somebody remember the name of that, you know what I'm talking about. You'll have seen facebook's video chat. Gosh. Well it's like a, it's a video streaming camera you put in your house to facebook live with your guests. So I said, why don't we just get facebook live and we can put emily over in the corner and y'all can just take turns going to talk to her like. So. No it does with them. I can't believe you will have seen it. Um, I'll pull it up for you. But it technology is allowing us to be in more places than one, and so how is going to some technology to help us be there with our clients have done live video recording for them. When you're you and properties, and I don't know if any of you skype or video facetime with them while you're reviewing something. The technology is just helping you communicate with them. It's not replacing what you say or do with them is just allowing you to not have to physically be there face to face with them, which is why there's always going to be a place for us, but you got to watch these people there to using the technology. We can learn a lot from them and how to use the technology to further widen the gap and show why it's so much better to deal with us.
Speaker 2:Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:We're not trying to be Walmart and get their technology, but how can we learn from some of the things they do
Speaker 2:to better solidify our position is as full service experts.
Speaker 1:Thank you all for being here today and stick around for the lunch and learn. It's gonna be a fun one.
Speaker 2:Thank you.