How the Industry Changed While I was in Iraq – Part 1/4

In 2005, I was a Colorado Springs real estate broker who had just sold a Keller Williams franchise five months before and opened a new private brokerage with the first 18 agents. I was having the best year of my career brokering real estate – mainly working for California real estate investors buying newly-constructed single family homes as rental properties.

It was October 12, 2005 that I noticed that Western Union letter on my dining room table with the rest of the mail. I knew this had to be bad news because who else uses Western Union for letters other than the Army? Either something had happened to my father, who is still an active duty soldier, or the Army was calling on me.

Fortunately and unfortunately, it was the latter. Apparently, as a military academy graduate, the army had the right to call me back to active service anytime within 8 years of my graduation date. I confirmed with a phone call that I really did have to report back to the army in 30 days for an 18 month tour of duty.

The purpose of this 4-part series is to discuss how the real estate industry landscape has changed between the time I checked out of the real estate world and reported for duty on January 15, 2006 and returned home on May 3, 2007. The change has been tremendous both in substance and tone.

From this agent’s perspective, here is the context of the real estate industry prior to departing for Iraq:

1. Only three real estate websites affected my business as a real estate agent:

1. Realtor.com
2. My local MLS
3. My website

2. My website was hugely successful because I had a high-tech MLS IDX capture system that allowed me to trade potential customers access to my MLS in exchange for their contact information.

3. I had never read a blog and thought that they were only used in politics.

4. If someone wanted to find out their home’s value, they could either contact an agent and ask or they could go to HouseValues.com and get tricked into asking an agent.

5. Realtor.com was very one-dimensional, limited, and had a choppy user interface [some things never change].

6. The only companies who implemented a business model where they paid customers to work with them were companies who had to in order stay in business.

The remaining 3 parts of this series will discuss the following:

• Part 2: My experience discovering blogs, podcasts, and the new real estate websites as a mental distraction during evenings in Baghdad.
• Part 3: My perspective on today’s real estate technology landscape after being detached for so long.
• Part 4: My perspective on what is coming in the next year.