For those of us in the real estate profession, the role of technology continues to grow at a breathtaking clip.  Recent newspaper and magazine commentaries have been filled with real estate trends, and a common thread in many of them is the increasing prominence of technology.  The articles are not just referring to the obvious tools such as social media or lead generation websites.  Rather, they describe the evolution of technological advances that will alter the way real estate agents and their clients fundamentally interact.  It begs the question as to whether the growth in technology will enhance the role of the real estate broker or eventually subsume it?

Imagine, for example, that you are interested in a new house.  It is estimated that as many as 90 percent of home buyers start their search online.  In this vein, you start perusing available listings on your computer in the comfort of your own home, or you might look at the listings with an app on your smartphone.  In the future, you may see a 3-D virtual floor plan and even be able to move furniture around in the rooms with a few swipes of your mobile device.  In an interesting article in Boston.com, “3 Ways Advanced Tech is Transforming Real Estate Marketing,” Rodrigo Lopez of Neoscape writes about iBeacon, an iPhone app that will alert a mobile device that its owner is near and then send information to the device.   He describes a potential homebuyer standing outside a real estate office looking at a listing in the window.  Suddenly, the interested onlooker gets an iBeacon alert on his phone with more information on the property featured in the window.  I can envision a similar scenario when people pass by an active open house and receive an alert to their smartphone with a few key facts about the property.  If potential buyers are unable to make an open house, then they will someday just take interactive tours online.

Having identified a couple of select properties using the technological tools at your fingertips, however, the real work begins. Your real estate broker will organize showings of homes that meet your criteria.  If your list of properties disappoint, the real estate agent will know similar houses and neighborhoods that might be suitable alternatives.  If a bidding war ensues or the purchase has a glitch of some sort, an experienced real estate broker can recommend viable compromises and negotiate the transaction on your behalf. So in many ways, technology will only strengthen the role of a good real estate agent by allowing him or her to stay focused on the crucial human elements of the transaction.  Technology cannot replace the experience a real estate broker brings, nor can it reach into the community and cultivate relationships with potential buyers and sellers.  Therefore, I fall squarely in the camp that technology will only enhance the role of real estate brokers, improve our efficiency and make us better at what we love to do.