February 2009

RE’s 2007 Dream Resolutions

REALonomics believes that 2007 will emerge as perhaps the most significant year of change in the real estate industry. Disruption of traditional models is no longer a topic for isolated discussion among the fringe lunatic wing of the industry. Yes, I know, REALonomics and Companies like e-Partner, were once in that category…now, we have gained a growing audience and traction, if only because our predictions are slapping us across the chops.

With ’07 a scant 48 hours away, REALonomics has assembled its own set of Real Estate’s 2007 Dream Resolutions.
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Time Magazine Anoints YOU!

It’s official. According to Time Magazine, YOU (as in you, me, he, her, him) are the 2006 Person of the Year!

Empowered by the World Wide Web (WWW), a.k.a., the Internet, the Consumer-Centric Era is the zone of personal empowerment and the democratization of self via the blogosphere and Napster-like peep-to-peer portals. Millions upon millions of consumers now wield the power of ONE, exponentially extrapolated into near infinity. According to Time Magazine YOU is the euphemism for an all powerful consumer, who shapes personal and corporate outcomes.

What does Time’s proclamation mean to the future shape of the real estate industry?
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Dear Owners, the Border Patrol is out in Force

Business, whatever shape or flavor, always seeks to define itself in term of “the market” its product or service intends to enter, and then builds its operating model around this concept. Real estate brokerage business models have been less deliberate about this than their mainline counterparts, opting to use the “wing-it” method of market management!

Dear Real Estate Company Owner, the Border Patrol is out in force and your business borders are being restricted and artificially defined by entities and persons whose motivations are not always in your best interest.

Market definition has become the single most powerful component in the New Real Estate Economy and there is battle raging over what constitutes these borders and who will control them.
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G B B B S A O

When I first wrote the second of the Ten Commandments in 2002 my own real estate company was moving into markets in non-traditional ways…without an office. We were getting big by being small all over or, GBBBSAO, if you please.

Vertical growth models (the idea of getting big in one market place) have a failed, at least from a sustainable ROI perspective. But they have also failed due to the chosen modus of growth used by brokerage firms for decades. REALonomics speaks to growth models that are fundamentally sound and utilize state-of-the-art tools coupled with consumer-centric appeal and direct interaction.

Is the best real estate company the largest or the one with the most agents, offices, highest number of listings, most sales, highest gross commission income or the biggest name brand in town? An even more penetrating question might be:

“How does a real estate company expand and what is expansion, anyway?”

We can answer this question by disecting the OLD business model in light of the New Real Estate Economy and then comparing it with newer REALonomical models.
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Break Dancing at the Morpheum

The first ot the Ten Commandments for the New Real Estate Economy is to create and maintain agile brokerage operating models that compliment and enable constant business morphing.

Does your real estate company morph; can it break dance to the contemporary rythms of a rapidly evolving and highly competitive climate dominated by a host of Non-Brokers, each armed with the latest fast-track model for market penetration and consumer loyalty?

Thou shalt be very, very agile; then more agile is the REALonomics commandment for thriving organizations. Nimble operations is the result of a deliberate cultural business priority. Culture makes business, I believe, not just raw data models and stainless steal operating paradigms. Agility is part of the character of a real estate business model…maybe, dare I say, a part of its very soul.
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