Blog Post: The Far Limit of How Social Media is Impacting Real Estate

Before we get going here, we'll define 'social media' as a set of tools and technology accessed via the Internet that accommodate & promote social interaction. There are more tools coming into this category than we can possibly cover in one post, but the point being made right now is that it will impact real estate significantly - possibly more so than other industries because of the predominate characteristics of how real estate is transacted and how housing impacts socialization in general.  There is a lot more about how social media will impact real estate in the Agent2.0 model.

For example, we are seeing blogging taking the real estate professional by storm right now - early estimates are that almost 70% of the community will begin blogging this year. Some think this is a silver bullet to connecting with clients - reality says it is not - the same analysis goes on to state that a majority of the those who attempt real estate blogging will fail - maybe some other social media tactic will work for them though. Time will tell.

There are a few real visionaries out there actually testing the limits of social media in a way you should know about however. Here is a great example -

A few weeks ago at the Inman Connect 2007 conference in San Francisco, Coldwell Banker announced a listing presentation technique that no on else has ever done before, but one that I think many will try as the market advances. (BTW - they also won the Inman Award for 'Most Innovative Brokerage or Franchise')

Coldwell Banker had a model built in Second Life, the 3D online social networking community, of a home for sale. The home is situated on Mercer Island, outside of Seattle and is listed for $3M, so the portion of the market interested in this kind of property is relatively small for sure.

So why take the time and spend the money to do it?

To help answer that question, you can listen to a collection of interviews recorded in a podcasts (you can listen to them with out an iPod - don't worry) with Suzanne Lane, the local agent from Coldwell Banker Bain, Suzanne Mueller, the marketing director for CBBain and David Marine, Senior Manager for eMarketing for Coldwell Banker HQ out of Parsippany, NJ.

The short answer is because now you can; Coldwell Banker has shown that you can now present a 7x24 open house for a global audience that can be visited whenever the prospective client wishes. You can now stand in the kitchen of the virtual house and see the view as if you were in the actual house on Mercer Island. You can walk through the home and get a sense of proportion of the 30-seat home theater and the 3 car garage.

This is much more than an agent today might usually invest in selling a home, but I wonder... how long before we see more of it?