Realtors, Home Buying and Social Media

On Thursday, Pam and I had the chance to speak to RE/MAX Paramount about Social Media and your web presence. What a great group! They had great questions and, were eager to share their success stories, and even poked fun at me regarding the general theme found in my spam box (cough…John Shea)

On our way back to the office we talked about how house hunting as changed over the past ten years. Here is our top 5. We call it “In the Year 2000” (Thanks Conan)

1.In the year 2000: Get the Sunday paper, sit down with the coffee and highlighter and plan your open house attack for the day

Now: Still got your coffee but at the computer playing on HotPadz and Trulia.

2. In the year 2000: For information on a house you probably saw one wide lens picture and a Tweet-sized description.

Now: Do a 360 Virtual Tour of a house in your pjs.

3. In the year 2000: Realtors would bake cookies and treats and serve them up at the open houses to make it smell like home.

Now: They skip the cookies and ask you for your email address so they can inundate your inbox on a daily-basis.

4. In the year 2000:  The only thing you knew about a realtor was their mugshot…whoops I mean headshot in the newspaper

Now: Thanks to Social Networking you can see everything from what they ate for breakfast to YouTube videos of their kids playing baseball.

5. In the year 2000: You had one phone number (hopefully a cell) to reach your realtor. If they weren’t there you are both out of luck.

Now: You have the office number, cell number, three email addresses, husband/wives cell phone, home address, Twitter feed, Facebook profile – you name it they will give it to you (since they’ve all bought stock in Blackberries apparently – and what? no iPhones?). If you can’t find your realtor, you didn’t try hard enough.

What did we miss?