Its' A Small World After All

I just returned from Atlanta and a National Real Estate convention. The talk of the convention was, of course, the state of Real Estate. The general consensus amoung the great economic minds there was we will see a slight, further softening in the market for the rest of 2008 and a then a slow but steady climb in 2009.

National numbers and regional numbers vary widely and I even talked to some folks from San Francisco and the Carolinas that were having price increases and record setting volumes of sales. I talked with two agents from Austin, Texas one was setting records one was struggling - (I think the struggling agent was selling mostly smaller lower end homes- where buyers have a harder time getting loans these days). It quickly became clear that while national numbers are a general tracking tool the real number that matters to you is the one in your market place. I know when I see a national number like "24% drop in prices" I know that is not true in our market. Yet when I see a national number like "27% drop in sales" figures from last year I have to say that is about right. The point is that local information is what matters. The national numbers don't have much relevance in your local market.

In other parts of the convention, where we actually got away from the "numbers talk" we started looking at how buying and selling real estate is changing. The big conclusion was that the market place is going "hyper" local. Consumers, with the help of the web, are no longer searching broad terms such as "Anytown Real Estate" they are looking into precise neighborhoods - even going to the street level. Satelite and mapping tools make this process all the more simple.

Now more than ever, if you are a seller, you need an agent who is able to connect with this web savvy audience and bring that information to the main place the consumers are - your local level on the World Wide Web.