Could Real Estate Technology have saved this brokerage?

Recently, discount brokerage, Foxton's, announced it laid off 90% of its work force, essentially signalling it's demise. Inman News' Scott Einbinder wrote an excellent article entitled "After Foxton's, a 'real' real estate story" covering the news, adding an interesting take on the reaction of this brokerage's downfall . To see the original Inman News post, please click here.

The emotional reaction to this event in the real estate community is extremely revealing because it demonstrates an unfortunate trend that has existed in the industry for ages. That is the industry is too often focused internally on itself, rather than on the customers it is supposed to serve. You constantly hear and see Realtors spend untold sums of money splashing their pictures and logos on everything from park benches to refrigerator magnets, but ask a brokerage or an independent realtor how much they have invested in themselves and their education, and more often than not, the answer, is very, very little.

And the reasons for not continuing their education don't always revolve around the expense of it. You often hear "I'm are too busy to educate", or "I don't see the real value in it". Real estate professionals regularly talk about service, and "placing the customer first", but a shockingly small percentage of them actually follow through.

Thankfully with the advent of Web 2.0, and the continuous flow of "need for technology education" articles originating from the most popular real estate news sites has changed this attitude significantly in the last few years, but many professionals still sit on the side line.

Real Estate brokerages, Realtors, and assistants need to realize the value in investing in their skills - the skills and techniques that will help them better serve their customers. In the current real estate landscape, that means utilizing web-based technologies. These technologies were created to make our lives easier, to more successfully serve our customers - so why do we not utilize them?

Benjamin Franklin wrote that the definition of insanity is "doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result". Maybe it's time, as a community, we realize that the same old RE practices are merely producing the same old results. Maybe it's about time we learn some new ones, not only to benefit ourselves, but for the benefit of our customers...