We have come full circle

by Shawn Lackie

This may sound corny but, remember the good old days when there were maybe two or three Real Estate brokerages in town? They were usually small independent businesses?

Then along came the big guys – Re/Max, Royal LePage, Century 21 and so on. Things changed drastically. These places would rent large office space and could house 50 plus agents with their own offices, board rooms and closing rooms. It was a bricks and mortar extravaganza.

If you wanted to meet your agent, you’d trek on down to the office and be shown all of the latest and greatest listings, from a giant catalogue which made Eatons or Simpsons jealous. There would be a new one of those delivered every two weeks, so you had to stay on top of things if you were a serious buyer or seller. Your agent needed to be engaged as well. At one point, the agents were actually employees of the brokerage and were paid a regular wage.

I still remember the George Stone Real Estate office on Queen Street. There were some realtors around but certainly not the plethora we face these days. House prices were crazy low, compared to today’s wild prices.

Then things started to change. The big name brands showed up and bought out the little guys. Soon enough, there were more agents, the whole business was growing. With that came the larger offices, as previously noted.

Technology was changing too. This strange new thing called the Internet came along, and with it a flurry of changing business practices. Those huge catalogues of home listings gave way to websites, like Realtor.ca and a few others. Communication methods changed, hello: cell phone, fax and wire transfer.

All of this swirling change was somewhat hard to keep up with but it 'improved the way business was conducted.' Or did it? Along the way, some of the personal touch was sacrificed for this “New way.” Meetings could be had on the phone, offers could be sent via fax, so there was less need to meet in person. The whole process of showing a home changed.

More and more people turned to Realtor.ca for the latest listings, complete with pictures and virtual tours. You could literally sit in your chair and shop for your next domicile. It doesn’t get any easier than that. As a result of all this change, agents had a tendency to hibernate more. By which I mean, they just didn’t bother going to the office every day. Which is a shame.

I always believed, if you want to really live the experience, you go into the office every day. You hang with other agents, share stories and ideas and, along the way, become better at what you do because of that interaction, or at least partly. Like many other things which have become somewhat passe.

In response to the drop off in office activity, many brokerages responded by either closing down the office completely or substantially reducing the size, to better fit the need. So we seem to have come full circle. We now see smaller boutique offices and fewer agents, at least locally.

I guess the more things change, the more they really do stay the same.

Feel free to check out this story and more on my blog site, at: https://slackie14.wixsite.com/buy-sell-and-more.