Can everything — including buyer agency — be ‘Uberfied?’

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Last October, a pundit in Huffington Post asked, “Where is on-demand headed next?”  His answer:

We’re now entering what I like to call “phase II” of the on-demand economy…

…up the ladder to higher-end professions. It won’t just be drivers and dry cleaning, but also lawyers and architects, as we’re already seeing.

But where are the limits of on-demand? The question came up recently when watching tech giants like Amazon and Google move into the biggest on-demand category of all: Home Services.

…But on-demand home services have proven difficult… just ask Homejoy (which closed).

On-demand vs Fee-for-Service in Real Estate

If a homebuyer is working with an exclusive buyer brokerage, are “fee-for-service” and “on-demand” the same thing? Maybe, maybe not — depends on what service the homebuyer chooses from an agency disclosure form (see state mandated form in Massachusetts).

If the real estate licensee is simply acting as facilitator, then non-agency services rendered the SAME DAY of the showing have a place when offered “on-demand.”

However, if the real estate professional is offering fiduciary-level buyer agency representation, SAME DAY showings and rushed offers are IMHO imprudent if not irresponsible.  To paraphrase marketing guru Seth Godin who praised the Real Estate Cafe’s hourly fee model a decade ago, “‘On-demand’ could be the refuge of a DEALTOR or non-agency business model that has no experience or expertise to add value.”

Over the past two decades, our time sheets have typically tallied 25 to 45 hours, but those billable hours are spread out over months, often over years as shown in the image above — and nearly always PREPAID. If you’ve seen the movie The Big Short, you know why this graphic shows that patience is more valuable than speed:

  • In declining housing market,
  • During uncertain times (like before an election), or
  • Negotiating with / waiting out the owner of an overpriced property.

Would you believe that nearly a decade ago, our goal was to help our buyer clients save six figures on every home they bought?  Impressive as that sounds, it’s important to remember that real estate is cyclical and there was a time when three listings failed for every two that sold.  Think speed matters in that kind of market?  NO, over eagerness is actually counterproductive — especially this time of year!

On-demand vs Being proactive

Right now, some homebuyers in Greater Boston / Eastern Massachusetts are waiting for more inventory to come into the market during 2Q2016, but we’ve got proactive househunting strategies and special incentives that could help you save money on both the real estate commissions and purchase price.

From our perspective, that’s more valuable and credible than the “Urberfication of everything.” If on-demand services appeal to you, why not propose your own fee and rebate — one year, one in three of our buyer clients did.  Want to talk about it in person over beer at one of our upcoming #REonTap sessions, or communicate via RealEstateCafe@gmail.com?

Related Articles

Idea Bar: Model for mapping open house traffic

Could MIT’s iSPOSTS project, a live map of wireless users as they move around campus with their laptop computers, become a model for tracking open house traffic LIVE on weekends in the future?  If so, who might benefit, who might be harmed, and given that, would buyers willingly share their househunting tours or hide them?  One example of a potential real estate use springs from comments on yesterday’s program about falling real estate prices in 2006.  If buyers and sellers can see the number of people visiting open houses in different price ranges and locations, it could be possible to make more intelligent decisions about how much buyers should offer for houses for sale, or how much sellers should ask for their own home.  Could such a system be developed today, using the same cellphone triangulation on of your previous callers just mentioned?

MIT Museum of Emerging Technologies Gallery exhibit entitled, iSPOTS:  Living and Working in MIT’s Wireless Community

It also provides information on exactly how many people are logged on
at any given location at any given time. It even reveals a user’s
identity if the individual has opted to make that data public.  The files indicate the number of users connected to each of MIT’s more
than 2,800 access points. The map that can pinpoint locations in rooms
is 3-D
, so researchers can even distinguish connectivity in
multistoried buildings.  A model which would serve mid to high rise buildings, and reveal demand and pricing premiums for floors.

MIT’s new experimental electronic maps track any "devices people use to connect to the network, whether they’re laptops, wireless PDAs or even Wi-Fi equipped cell phones."  Time-stamped maps are available to network users anytime online, and are saved for up to 12 hours.

Ability for a buyer agent to track buyer as they go from open house to open house; and for sellers who may be disappointed by attendance at their open house can see traffic flow at comparable properties.  Instead of waiting for properties to show up as solds or "under agreement," sellers and listing agents can view traffic patterns and hence demand every 15 minutes every Sunday. 

The identity of homebuyers can be hidden to the public (particularly sellers), but visible to their buyer agent and other family members, like parents who may be following their children’s househunt from remote.

More likely that open house tracking maps will be cellphone based rather than online access.  Ability to report location of phone call within 50 meters.  Like the MIT system, color coded splotches on maps could show the open houses with the highest traffic.  That kind of information could be factored into bidding strategies and negotations on the subject property, and pricing decisions on rival properties.

Questions:  Collaborative effort of sellers, or of buyers?

Open only to MLS listings, or any home regardless of source:  for sale by owner, foreclosure whether bank owned or government agency, and new construction.

Will phones need to be on, or will location only be trackable when a call is initiated or received?

Will phone communicate demographic information or merely traffic.  For example, it would be helpful to know where baby boomers are looking versus first-time, and trade-up buyers.

Would traffic levels be most valuable at the neighborhood or town level, or metro or regionally?

MIT Museum news releases states:  "The usage patterns should
  be very interesting, not just to the MIT community, but also to urban planners,
  architects, and city policy-makers who will be interested in the implications
  of the changing nature of how and where people work and access information."
 

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