http://realonomics.net/2006/11/the-second-economic-wave/ real estate business models in the consumer-centric era Thu, 01 Jul 2010 20:47:53 -0700 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 http://realonomics.net/2006/11/the-second-economic-wave/comment-page-1/#comment-8 Mike Carraway Wed, 29 Nov 2006 14:02:55 +0000 http://realonomics.net/?p=12#comment-8 In 1991, I was with a franchise in north Louisiana. I had a great idea - let's put our listings on a computer and hook it up to a modem and advertise it and see who calls in to view the listings. The phone rang day and night. The next idea was to change the delivery method for all MLS information. I decided, along with my broker of course, to put the entire local MLS on the computer. At that point in time, if a customer wanted to see info on a property, we could download and print it out and HAND it to them. In our opinion, all we were doing was changing the delivery method of the information. We got everything set up and were ready to advertise when a call came in from the Louisiana Real Estate Commission - cease and desist. My how times have changed. All of this information is now available 24/7 worldwide through the interent. I believe that what we were doing, in the context of the above article, is jumping directly from the Broker Centric model to the consumer centric model and it was too radical for the time. 10 years later, however, it was commonplace. In 1991, I was with a franchise in north Louisiana. I had a great idea – let’s put our listings on a computer and hook it up to a modem and advertise it and see who calls in to view the listings. The phone rang day and night. The next idea was to change the delivery method for all MLS information. I decided, along with my broker of course, to put the entire local MLS on the computer. At that point in time, if a customer wanted to see info on a property, we could download and print it out and HAND it to them. In our opinion, all we were doing was changing the delivery method of the information. We got everything set up and were ready to advertise when a call came in from the Louisiana Real Estate Commission – cease and desist. My how times have changed. All of this information is now available 24/7 worldwide through the interent. I believe that what we were doing, in the context of the above article, is jumping directly from the Broker Centric model to the consumer centric model and it was too radical for the time. 10 years later, however, it was commonplace.

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