Rustico to your point on real estate not being a profession. Here’s my take on it. I think a lot of people flocked to real estate jobs during the boom much like people did to headhunting jobs during the .com boom. Many many unqualified folks who left a bad taste.
The internet has changed the dynamics of many industries, not just real estate or job searches. Its made information readily available in some instances and allows people to “self serve”. Much like it took a bit of time for people to adopt online banking, I think the progression of end user adoption as well as better technology and implementing research around web usability, more and more things will become self serve for certain segments of the population as well as for specific functions.
I believe however there will still be a segment of clients out there that will be full service. Online brokerage/trading versus private client services. People will have complex requirements or will require particularly skilled specialists.
As it applies to housing, I would think the industry will evolve to where some homesellers and buyers will feel comfortable doing it themselves, much like FSBO happens today, but all online without sales agents. I would like to believe that some day you can execute your entire home buying / selling transaction online (with the exception of actually going to look at the house).
I know a lot of people felt they “had” to hire a real estate agent to buy a home because they didn’t understand how to navigate the process of escrow, title, finding a mortgage and understanding it. Unfortunatley many of these real estate agents didn’t know how to read or understand the mortgage docs any better than you or I. I would like to think this whole process will be streamlined and simplied so that intelligent people can understand what they are reading.
I believe the WSJ yeasterday indicated some of the mortgage documents and disclosures will be simplified as many buyers either do not understand all of the documents nor did they read them.
There will and are real estate professionals that are highly skilled in negotiating or navigating complex real estate transactions that some portion of the population will still want to “pay” for their expertise. The internet cannot replace humans completely. And there will always be people who just don’t want to be bothered to find a home or to sell a home themselves and will want to hire someone to do it for them.
I’m not sure how else you can define a profession Rustico, but in my book, possessing skills or knowledge that others will pay for constitutes a profession. The quality of the profession is an entirely different story.
