It's really pretty simple to understand how real estate has changed.  Just pretend you are looking for a home.  Would you rather talk to a salesperson, or would you rather find the same information online, at your convenience with no pressure?  It might be easy underestimate the impact of these radical changes.  Here are a few stats:

	1997	2007
% of homes with internet access	18%	77%
Home buyers using the internet	2%	80%
Listings with virtual tours	0%	30%
Time download a 4MB virtual tour	71 Secs	2 secs
Premium download speeds	56kbps	2mbps
Searchable MLS	No	Yes

It's easy forget how much our world has changed.  Ten years ago, home computers were still the exception.  Today they are the expectation.  Download speeds are 30-300x faster than they were in 1997, allowing for more photos, and, of course, virtual tours.  Two years ago, only 2% of the home listed had virtual tours.  Today it runs from 25-30% depending on the part of the country you are in. 

In fact, it wasn't until 1997 that consumers could search for homes online.  That's when Realtor.com, the National Association of Realtors website, began to load all the MLS data nationwide into a single site so consumers could search.  This marked a major shift in real estate.  Before this year, realtors controlled all the information.  From 1997 on, information was free and available to the public. 

Prior to 1997, realtors sold based on a tried and true paradigm.  Hold open houses, advertise in the paper, and put a sign in the yard.  Then sit back and wait for someone to show up or call.  All of these approaches were reactive, not proactive, and assumed the buyer would approach the agent, primarily because the agent was the only source of infomation.  That's no longer the case. 

Things didn't instantly change in 1997, because people still wanted to see homes, and computers were still too slow.  It wasn't until enough home computers had broadband access that the changes really took effect.  And this is a fairly recent phenomenon.  Two years ago, for example, only 2% of the homes listed had virtual tours.  Today, it approaches 30%, and at the rate of growth will climb over 50% within a year or two.

Many agents do not completely understand this shift.  This is partly because the most experienced agents were never technically oriented.  They learned the business before computers, when they searched through reams of paper to find properties to show.  These agents still expect things to work the way it did work for decades.  For the buyers to call them.  But it doesn't work that way anymore. 

To sell homes today, agents must learn to provide information to buyers in exchange for a chance to communicate.  There are dozens of ways to do this: email, free voice recordings, free fax reports, informational flyers, virtual tours, photo galleries, internet information to name of few.  And that's what we do.  For an example of one of our techniques, please call the following pre-recorded toll-free 1-800 number. 

1-800-497-1345 x9009

This may seem a very simple way to market a property.  It's completely toll-free, pre-recorded, and available 24x7x365.  Try it; it will only take a few minutes, and I think you'll be very surprised how effective it can be.