Who Should Attend?

RE BarCamp welcomes real estate industry related people,  including real estate agents, real estate brokers, lenders, inspectors, home-stagers, title reps, coaches, geeks, non-geeks, geek wannabes and anyone who is interested in learning and sharing knowledge in a freely collaborative environment.

In addition to the Virtual BarCamp eXp Realty is also hosting real-life meetups immediately following the event taking place in Phoenix, Seattle and Bellingham. Visit our Events Page for details and directions to those events.

I’ll list a few of those benefits along with their financial equivalent where appropriate are below:

• Carbon Footprint
  • Less Driving to and from an Office
    • Assuming an Office is an average of 5 miles from one’s home there is likely a savings of 10 miles per trip to the office.  Assuming having to run into the office once per day that is a savings of over 200 miles per month on your automobile.  Using the tax deductibility of 55 cents/mile as the loaded cost of driving that means that as an agent you will save an average of $110/month.  This overall deduction is based on the price of gas, oil, maintenance and depreciation related to driving however even if the true costs are 1/2 of that that is still $55/month savings or a net increase of $660 – $1320 / year to the real estate agent and staff members.  It also means fewer Carbon emissions.
    • Assume as well that a well connected agent has a decent laptop in the field as well as a Smartphone like the iPhone then there is additional efficiencies of being able to work where you are rather then being conditioned to drive back to the office for everything.
  • Eliminate the Carbon Footprint of the Office
    • Check out: http://www.thegreenoffice.com/carboncalculator/calculator/
      • I don’t know exactly how to read the final report however a 50 person office with 5000 square feet of office space and a 10,000 square foot parking lot on average creates a Carbon Footprint of 3,175.8 Global Acres, and produces by itself 282.6 tons of CO2.  In addition redundant physical costs of heating, cooling, and maintaining such a structure has a national average cost of $7065/year or at least that is the number that I pulled out of the calculator which seem on reflection not inaccurate.
• Paperless
  • In real estate we still haven’t been able to get totally away from Paper but we are certainly making progress
    • Many offices still make multiple copies of a contract
      • One of the Agent Physical File
      • One for the Broker Physical File
      • One for the Escrow Officer
      • One for the Lender
      • Two for the Clients
        • One for the Buyer
        • One for the Seller
    • By creating a shared electronic box.net we are able to reduce the number of copies considerably
      • One file electronically uploaded (via a scanner or an efax)
      • Shared with Broker
      • Shared with Agent(s)
      • Shared with Client(s)
      • Shared with Lender
      • Shared with Escrow Officer
    • Assuming they can download in pdf format and keep an electronic copy paper is kept to a minimum
  • Ecosign / Docusign
    • As early adopters using Ecosign or Docusign can eliminate printing all together.  This is still more of an ideal but these services are coming.
• Corporate Travel
  • We’ve talked a bit about Home Office however how do we get around some of the big ticket travel
    • Immersive Persistent Virtual Offices & Conference Centers
      • To understand the potential visit http://www.secondlife.com/
      • Though SecondLife.com is more of a Video Game then a business productivity tool (so far), the fact is that SecondLife has opened up the eyes of a lot of major corporations about the potential of working in Virtual 3D space in a similar way that we interact in real space.  Through the use of similar technology we are able to reduce the need for Corporate Travel dramatically.  We are able as a group to more effectively collaborate and develop systems and plans where systems like GotoMeeting, WebEx are left far behind in terms of true collaboration and ultimate engagement.
      • We believe that this new environment which wasn’t available to the masses of real estate agents even two years ago will radically change the culture of Work and Collaboration.
  • The reduction this year in Corporate Travel has already been significant.  We have reduced our big ticket travel by 50% through the adoption of Virtual Office strategies and we expect to drive them down even further as a % of overall expenses without giving up many of the benefits of physical travel.
  • The significant time and money savings is huge as well.  By not having to travel to the airport, parking, picking up a rental car, getting a hotel room / conference room is huge.  These translate into net real savings for eXp Realty and an increase in the financial splits to agents and staff.

As you can see there are very compelling reasons for going Green, however how one goes Green may have greater financial impact then simply going Green.  We think we have adopted strategies which will change the way brokers, agents and consumers think about Virtual Real Estate Companies.

As always do feel free to write info@exprealty.com or please also feel free to call me, Glenn Sanford, direct on my Google Voice number @ 360-389-2426.

I titled this Blog Post, The Relevance and Future Demise of Bricks and Mortar and I believe that Bricks and Mortar in real estate especially is going to come under serious attack.  The primary reason as I’ll layout below is that it isn’t relevant anymore or its really becoming less relevant.  The second reason is one of money.  I do not by the way consider money the primary motivator for the demise however financial reasons will force the adoption of other methods of agent aggregation.

First why WAS Bricks and Mortar relevant?

The primarly reason was that was where the information on homes was kept.  Back since the Industrial Revolution and Automobiles and modern travel, the information on who’s home was for sale and how one could access it was controlled by brokers.  At the time, this was a very efficient model given other ways to gather information.  Everyone in town probably knew who the broker’s were and based on who they liked best they would give a broker a listing and that broker would shake the trees through his / her network of prospective purchasers and hopefully find a buyer.  I haven’t read the history of brokerages in general however if a broker or brokers had the listings that made it easier for buyers to access the listings and so they would travel from broker to broker to find a property.

Obviously the better brokers would need to have sub-brokers or agents to help them stay on top of all the listings.  Now the agents would obviously need to come to the office because that is where all the information on the listings existed.

As time went smaller brokers affiliated and shared information among themselves to compete with the bigger brokers and so the MLS came into existence.  The MLS really was printed pages circulated between brokers with an agreement to compensate each other if one of the member offices sold a property.

Eventually the MLS’s became more important then the brokers.  Now it was less about the brokers and more about being able to share information between the different firms because of the MLS, however in order for a consumer to access the MLS info they still needed to go into an office.  That is also where they kept, “The Book”.

The Book was really the MLS printout which was produced once or twice a month and was the bible of real estate.  The Book was protected like it was the Holy Grail and it really was because it insured that consumers needed to come into the office to meet with an agent to go and see property.  Seller’s had it a little better since it was their properties being listed the agents would come to them and really had no serious need to go to the office other then to complain to the broker or drink some coffee with their agent.

Now the 1990’s rolls around and things started to change.  By the late 1990’s there were public facing websites with some of the information that consumers could find in “The Book”.  Consumers started to use the web to search for properties however generally speaking information was a bit spotty.  There were no really good search sites and the Internet though recognized for its future importance was still a bit of a novelty for most.

Fast forward to the mid 2000’s.  Everything that was in The Book is now on The Web…  Consumers have quit stopping by real estate offices in the volume that they used to, they are now contacting agents on the web to ask questions.  They are finding great websites to search with better information then they could ever find in a real estate office.  Agents are now getting consumers leads to their Blackberry’s and iPhones.  The need to go into the office is losing its appeal and for many agents its more of a time waster.  Consumers are now coming up with their list of properties they want to look at and in many circumstances know a lot more about the homes they are interested, the zoning, the schools, the neighbors and the neighborhoods then the agents they are contacting.  By the way, I’m not saying the agents aren’t competent at all, what I am saying however is the web based agent has to cover a larger geography then the traditional old school agent and is really becoming more of a facilitator then the holder of the information or “The Book”.

Now if we look at the original reason why agents needed to work in a broker’s office the primary reason was because that was were the listings were and that is where consumers were conditioned to go to get access to the listings.

Today broker’s have a big challenge on their hands because they are forced to provide value to agents who really don’t get a lot of value from the brokerage bricks and mortar themselves.  Brokers are forced to cut sweet heart deals to agents for fear of losing the revenue associated with that agent but this is a major slippery slope because ultimately any deal cut for one agent makes it to all other agents who are working in that firm or prospective agents looking to join.  Now the broker is forced to do more with less and the agents know they can get more for less.  As much as a broker will attempt to differentiate based on their personal interaction with the agents, and that will work for a while, eventually agents will defect to where they can again get more for less and since the biggest commodity that the brokerage used to have and that was the listings and the customers walking through the doors on a regular basis went away because of the web, their relevance to the agent community at large is one of branding and not substance.

So where does that leave us.  The first major challenge is for agents and brokerages to recognize that the value is no longer in the listings.  Even though listings are important for branding and ultimately as a product to market and sell, they don’t mean a lot because of the MLS and the Internet.  The second major challenge is that consumers don’t say let’s go find ourselves a real estate office to find out what is for sale, so walk in traffic is at an all time low and going lower.  The market recently driven by the First Time Home Buyer tax credit will likely slow down again once the Government determines that it has done as much as it can to help stimulate the market and once again agents will be scrambling to take as much home from the transactions that generate and the traditional brokerages will be struggling with their overheads.

To put in perspective the cost of Bricks and Mortar runs between $2000 on the low side of the equation upward of $7,000 – $10,000 / year per agent.  If you don’t think broker/owners aren’t scared of what is going on in the economy, there is a reason why they are recruiting as aggressively as they are.

One more piece of puzzle relative to “Relevance”.

There has been value in the gathering of agents into an office whether daily or weekly, however the value has been one of Social Value.  This is really the nail in the coffin of Traditional Firms.  There is a major attempt by brokerages as a last ditch effort to stay relevant by talking about the value of an office, the value of being able to meet with the broker, the Sales Manager etc… and I agree these are valuable, however remember the late 1990’s when everyone recognized the future importance of the Internet.  Well we are all recognizing the importance of “Social Media” and in my opinion even more importantly, the importance of Immersive Social Web or what we are referring to internally as Web 3.0.

This really is the Shift that will ultimately change the landscape of real estate brokerages.  Whether it be the more superficial Twitter, Facebook, Flikr, Box.net, Google Wave, Orkut or any other number of quasi communication / marketing platforms, or what I consider the Virtual Office of the Future which duplicates the residual value of Bricks and Mortar in Virtual space, the landscape of work and how we do it is being forever changed.

The fact that I can blog on this site and in a matter of a few minutes to a few hours or days have 100’s if not 1000’s of prospective eyeballs read it and interact with me over this is nothing short of amazing and being able to do it from my Home Office which is quickly becoming command central for a multi-state real estate company is the future of our future as agents, brokers and owners.

The question is one of relevancy.  Is Bricks and Mortar relevant when an Immersive Web exists where you can interact from your home office in much the same way as you would in a physical Bricks and Mortar office?  Not everyone will engage in the immersive web today, but rest assured those in the late teenage years or early 20’s, those agents who will be moving into the workforce over the next 5, 10 and 15 years.  Those agents will naturally gravitate to an immersive experience.  That immersive experience will displace bricks and mortar.  Broker/Owners of traditional firms you are frogs in a pot of water that is getting warming and warmer all the time…  The problem is the frog dies before it knows its time to jump out.  Try as you might by the time you recognize that you need to change you are too weak to jump out of the pot.

Interested in more information on eXp Realty and where we think the future is headed, please feel free to email info@exprealty.com or call me, Glenn Sanford, Founder and CEO of eXp Realty @ 360-389-2426.

Building a Scalable Business model that provides the highest ROI in the industry to our agents while providing virtually all the benefits of the traditional real estate office has been both enormously challenging and immensely rewarding at the same time. We are the first to have coined  the phrase (or for that matter anything similar), “The World’s First Fully Immersive Web 3.0 Real Estate Company.”  That essentially means eXp Realty is really a whole new business environment for collaborating, supporting agents with their listings and transactions, and as important the ecosystem for social interaction in and outside of our organization.  Search as I might, scouring countless real estate blogs, news, I have not found a single company that has envisioned the business model that we are rolling out.

This is a big project and I hope that you’ll take the time to learn more about eXp Realty and if it makes sense having you as part of our team.  Watch for our Webinars starting up in the next few weeks to learn more about eXp Realty.

eXp Realty owns and operates some of the most eXposed high-trafficked Real Estate websites in the industry. Every month our network of branded sites in major metros across the country receives over 50,000 targeted visits from Real Estate Buyers, Sellers and Professionals.  On each of these sites consumers find neighborhood reports, read market news, browse featured properties and search the MLS.

Above and beyond every eXp Listing is exclusively showcased with a photo tour, slideshow and listing details on our network websites for maximum eXposure.

• Consumer Advisor Group
• Executive / Staff Bios
  • Glenn Sanford , Founder / CEO (Please adapt bio from Wiki page)
  • Dale Kreiser , Broker Washington State
  • Brian Culhane
• Technology Team
  • Kirk Johnson
  • Gabe Hoggarth
  • Eddi Hughes
• PR / Articles

Now I meet them at Tully’s (or Starbucks) and we all look at my laptop. The view is still pretty good, happy coffee drinkers intent on their computer screens or deep in conversation, the urban scene going by outside the window. I buy the coffee. Going out on a tour, I usually bite the bullet and just pick them up at their home or hotel.

There is a huge reduction in cost, but don’t we all miss the old solid real world office environment?

Not so far.

Actually when my CEO told me that we were going completely virtual I lost a lot of sleep for the next couple of weeks! My overactive brain came up with all the reasons that it was a terrible idea to give up that lux conference room and the view. The big copy machine, the 24 hour access. The ability to hold team meetings (to which a third of the agents were always late) where we could go grab lunch afterward. And most especially, a place to take my clients at 11 p.m. to sign the docs that have to be faxed in that night because they are going to be on a plane the next morning.

Now that it’s been four months, I’m here to report that none of the disadvantages that I was afraid would occur actually have. Yes, I have spent money on faxing something at Kinko’s a couple of times. But it’s a LOT less than paying for the office for the entire month would have been! And I’ve met my clients in a convenient wi-fi spot. Never once has one of them asked why we’re not meeting at the office. They seem to feel it works great for their schedule that I choose somewhere most convenient for them, rather than asking them to come to my office (of course we are not neighborhood based, since our leads come to us from the Internet we work all over the Seattle Metro area and so it would usually be hard for many of them to come to any specific location anyway).

On the other hand, I provide them services that the non-virtual agents wouldn’t dream of offering. They get virtual tours of the properties they are considering before they ever get into town. I can video conference with them so that we can talk face to face while they are in the comfort and convenience of their own home. I provide them with numerous cutting edge tools to minimize their time and maximize their search capacity. For this reason, most of my clients including the youngest, most tech savvy and driven of them, seem very satisfied that they are getting the best service our always changing tech world can provide. That gives them and me more time to concentrate on the properties, their time line, the negotiations, and all the rest of the business of making it happen.

What about the team? What about those great face to face team meetings? Now I arrange to meet an agent for training or a conversation online. I sit down at my laptop where I love to work…I have a home office but my best view of the forest outside my windows is from the dining room table. I do still have to comb my hair since we’ll probably be video conferencing, but those videos will be on the heads of avatars walking around the board room or a private office in our new virtual office environment. It takes me two minutes to leave my kitchen and sign in and “get to my meeting.” Training is easy because we can record the session and the trainee can play it later as many times as they want, they don’t even have to take notes. Oh, and I can also play that for someone else who missed the session. Do I miss the lunches? Well, no one is stopping us from getting together…hey, it’s a great excuse to do a blog of a local hot spot!

We have a paperless office. Once I get the signed around documents by e-fax, I can simply upload them to my virtual file on our server, where my broker, the office admin, the lender and the escrow company can just click in and download them. My transaction coordination has become the simple measure of uploading it and sending an email telling them it’s there. We have an agent created training Wiki system. Since there are so many agents with experience and great working strategies, it enables us to share them with each other in a simple and time effective way, advancing everyone’s knowledge and helping us train our new members with much less time and effort. And we have incentives to help the company grow, which means that competent agents with something going on can bring in new agents without having to devote hours and hours and six months to intensive mentoring.

What I really love is that I don’t have to know how to do it all. Working with completely virtual offices leaves my company the budget to pay our full-time SEO team, which keeps our websites at the top of the search engines nationally. That means more leads for me, as relocating buyers hit our site first. Since most of the Buyers statistically work with the first agent that they speak with, that gives me a large pool of current and future clients. I love not having to work all that out myself, I know my tech limitations and figuring out how to have a #1 rated site is beyond me, unless I want to devote my whole life to it. But embracing the technology and having a team that is Web 2.0 has put me in a position of being able to focus on my part of the equation and concentrating on what is important…my Buyers and the homes they are looking for. Great, enhanced service is what we provide and all in all, yes, it’s working!