Super Bowl XLII, Real Estate and Consumers

It seems like yesterday the University of Phoenix Stadium (Home of Arizona Cardinals) was heavy in construction. Now it’s poised to serve as home to Super Bowl XLII with both teams landed and engaging practice here as of Monday. The event (along with the FBR / Phoenix Open) should bring millions to the Phoenix Valley and over 100,000 visitors through this week. Real estate pros should be out “shaking hands” with their outta-town, New York / Boston guests here in the Phoenix Metro…maybe buy them a beer and slip them a business card.

Tickets in Section 248 at the stadium are now going for $3900 to $6500. However, current ticket-holders aren’t the only ones looking to make a fast buck during the most highly televised TV event in the world.

Super Bowl Rental Properties
Homeowners in Glendale, AZ and other cities in the Phoenix Metro are looking to rent their homes for good money as hotel space is extremely limited. Many are, or should I say “trying to”, wear the agent hat these last couple of weeks, listing their properties in online classifieds like SuperBRentals.com, Craigslist (Phoenix, Boston and New York) and more. Many fall short with their marketing efforts given a couple of pictures, short property descriptions and overall lack of effort that does not instill sense of trust for renters to shell out thousands of dollars. Why do they fall short? Online, real estate technology is not their field of expertise…but, is online marketing of properties becoming easier where consumers can do more themselves?

Is RE Technology that Easy? Can Consumers Do it Themselves?
One acquaintance of mine here, Drew D., has a bachelor pad about 3 miles of the stadium and was doing okay with marketing efforts (a little action on eBay, Craigslist, etc). Drew is not in real estate, he’s a consumer who looked to rent his home. After light discussion, he decided to engage a single-property website (grabbing HTML to produce nice online flyers) and a virtual tour; technologies he wanted to implement in a short amount of time, get out the door, and separate his listing from the pack. Drew D. was determined to do this himself and simply have fun with it.

He ended up with a good property site at www.PhoenixEventHome.com (a generic domain name for future events well-beyond the Super Bowl) using an AgencyLogic Powersite and a RealBiz360 Virtual Tour. [Disclosure: AgencyLogic and RealBiz360 are sponsors of Webographers].

Note that Drew. D could have used VFlyer.com, Postlets.com and other service-providers for single-property website and HTML flyers. In-terms of tours, RealEstateshows.com, VisualTours.com, etc. could have also done the trick. What’s important to note is many technologies commonly used for “For Sale” properties hold true for Rentals, especially for those RE Pros in the property mgmt business.

Drew D. could have gone farther with his rental, claiming his property at Zillow, updating property information for a more accurate Zestimate, specifying a “Make Me Move” dollar amount as he now has outta-town eyeballs on his property. Overall, I was impressed with his efforts. For a first-timer…this was good.

Technology Rift Between Agents & Consumers on the Rise?
Here we have a scenario of a “consumer” performing activities with real estate technology; activities commonly performed by agents, assistants and other RE professionals. Makes me think back to Jeff Brown’s discussion where technology may leave Realtors behind in 2008.

Is the technology rift between agents and consumers continuing to grow? Should we view Drew. D, a gentleman in his early 30’s who commonly performs daily activities online as on outlier; negating any such myth? Would Drew D be the high-maintenance client expecting many technology bells & whistles from a listing agent? Should the slogans of today’s RE technology providers be…”so easy even a consumer can use it”?

BTW, Drew D. is still taking inquiries by upstanding individuals to rent his home for the Super Bowl.