When I opened my own San Antonio real estate office in 1987, my intention was to work as a one-man shop. I'd spent my previous 11 years in real estate bouncing around from one large company to another, working as office manager, training director, marketing director, real estate columnist for a popular San Antonio weekly newspaper chain, and most importantly, as a real estate agent. What I had discovered over the years was that the latter activity was were I was earning the most income. The prestige of managing an office, the exposure it brought in local San Antonio newspapers and real estate news magazines was good for the ego, but the bottom line income came from selling real estate.
I was a maverick of sorts at the time; most San Antonio real estate agents preferred working for the well-oiled mega-office companies, which offered a name brand, company training, constant updates on market conditions and innovations, and for many the comfort and competition that having other agents around the office provided.
I must admit that at first, I missed a lot of these features. The internet was still in the future; updates on San Antonio market condtions, new loan programs and marketing innovations were hard to come by. I did grow a small sales force; we numbered 7 at most, but we were aggresive and took advantage of the San Antonio foreclosure market in the the late 80s and early 90s, managing to place in the top 25 companies in San Antonio one year.
Sometime in the mid 90s the internet made its grand entry into the San Antonio real estate market. The word at the time was that if you didn't have your own website, you could not survive in the real estate industry. Well, that wasn't exactly true at the time. Most agents ignored the call for their own website and survived nicely throughout the remainder of the decade. Many of today's agents are still working with tried and true methods that brought them success in the past, and are still doing well Others have latched on to internet marketing, hiring webmasters and Search Engine Optimization experts to get them top position on google, yahoo and other search engines that over 80% of all buyers go to to find a home at some point in their quest to purchase a home.
The new-age internet agent is becoming more aware of the internet phenomena, and what they are discovering is that they can do the necessary marketing on their own, or in cooperation with other agents of like-mind who have found that with the resources available on the internet today, they no longer need the support of a large office.
Will this lead to the demise of the large real estate companies? Probably not. But they will have to make changes if they are to retain their top agents. One way they can do this is to reduce their sales forces and invest heavily in a smaller force of high producing agents, providing them with the very best in individual websites and strong Search Engine Optimization, which is the only way to get to the first page of the major search engines.
In the meantime, with the support of my wife, I am working at home, with a portion of my home devoted to a home office. My laptop, two printers, fax machine, cell phone and wireless router provide with all I need to keep up with the larger companies.
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