The XBrokers Rehash of Real Estate, Mortgage and Technology Predictions for 2007
December 30th, 2007 Categories: Mortgage News, Real Estate News, Real Estate Technology, Social Networking
New Years is upon us already, my how time flies, so a reflection on 2007 seems an appropriate final post of the year.
Last January I made some predictions for 2007, so let’s review what I saw in the crystal ball…
Active Rain and other community based ‘Blogsites’ are going to be Big.
- AR more than doubled their membership.
- Zillow and Trulia, both born with ‘3rd party destination sitetis’, add social features tit for tat (you say Voices, I say Discussions) trying everything to foster consumer AND agent engagement. It wont be long before both look like Yahoo!’s home page…busy busy busy.
- Community based BloodHound Blog (The Premier RE.net community blog) has like 50 contributers, Swann becomes a recognized influencer by coining th term RE.net.
- The Network (or Uber) blog is born.
- Blogging has become recognized as a requirement rather than a novelty for a properly ‘Web 2.0′d real estate professionals business plan.
- FaceBook went from zero to $15,000,000,000.00 in, like, less than 5 seconds.
‘Social Networking’ is the new Buzz of the Net…supplanting Web 2.0 as the most overused term…*Yak*
Web 2.0 technologies, specifically the Mash-up, will accelerate the paradigm shift influencing the way real estate is bought sold and financed.
This was a pretty broad and safe statement, a no brainer. A blog-site is a ‘web 2.0′ technology, and a mapping UI is the mash-up of existence for Redfin, Zillow, Truila and Estately. What I should have said is that ‘Open Source’ info-shareable (and share inducing information) technologies will acclerate the paradigm shift.
Transparency in the mortgage industry will cause a substantial financial shift in how (much) service providers make money.
Well, this was to be a self-serving prophecy, but I digress for now. Anywhoo, the word Transparency is/was used ad Nauseum in 2007, and it’s definition is too subjective down to the user, IMHO. Translucency seems a better word to describe most professionals definition of being open and honest about their business and all related information. ‘100% transparent’ is almost an idealogical philosophy rather than a reality in realty.
As far as the mortgage industry is concerned, while overall consumer education as to how the mortgage industry colludes against the consumer has dramatically improved, translucency still dominates the terrain. Only after terms like ‘credit crunch’, ‘mortgage meltdown’, ‘Sub-Prime implosion’, etc etc etc and a bill proposed by legislators and lobbyists became fixtures on the stupid box (TV) did the proverbial light bulb flicker on.
One thing I’ll never forget are the legions of mortgage professionals who argued (some still do) their ignorance in the public arena, telling anyone who listened that ‘it’s no one’s business how I make my money’ and that ‘YSP is how I make my money, butt out!’. WTF..?
Trying to control and confine information in The Information Age is a futile business strategy. Repeat this to yourself real estate and mortgage professionals…you’ve seen the landscape change dramatically over the past 12 mos, imagine the next 12…
Open source Listings will supplant the ‘proprietary nature’ in which they are traditionally held. Someone will create a National Listing Service that is accepted by those inside and heavily utilized by those outside of the industry.
This looks to be going a couple of ways…
1) NAR announces plan to launch a ‘Gateway’ to property listings
2) A perpetual iteration down to a ‘1-2 degree of separation’ between a consumer and ultimate free listing data. Properly using social networks like Active Rain, LinkedIn, and Spock on large levels to find Network Blogs on local levels, dialing down to individual blog-sites could pretty quickly and simply spell the end to centralized data aggregators like MLS’ are. Googles Open Social platform should catalyze this dynamic once the geeks wrap their collective heads around how to do this.
Buyers Agents who refuse to negotiate their Fee will find themselves relegated to the ‘laggard’ 50+ consumer niche.
This pedictionis manifesting itself in a quicker fashion than any real estate professional may want to admit, again attributed to increased consumer education and similar awareness…thx to the bloggers 
Video Listings will quickly become the next standard for effectively marketing a property, especially the high-end inventory.
I was wrong here. Dead wrong. I’m not knocking video (when it’s done well) but there are multiple ways to effectively and remarkably advertise property using multi-media. Bill Leider makes this point far more eloquently than I (read the comment thread that follows Bill’s post too)…
Incidences of foreclosures, predatory lending, fraud, and other negative factors will sharply increase as $1,000,000,000,000 in Adjustable Rate Mortgages are due for adjustment.
This statement looks so “Duh!?!” today, yet on 1/15/07, many many many people were still high on the ether, ignoring what became the biggest story in real estate for 2007.
The NAR will spend a record amount of money 1) Continuing to trash alternative models as evil 2) Fighting their anti-trust suit against the DOJ 3) Increasing the potency of their Kool-Aid…
Some things never change, although the NAR’s Gateway project (see above) seems to indicate a serious acquiescence by the large yet antiquated fraternity/sorority, alas there is sure to be mountains of red-tape to cut through (see the continued scary language like: For Realtors, by Realtors). In the end, they’ll probably screw it up.
My Link Roll will contain some of 2007’s biggest success stories in real estate and mortgage.
I see alot of successful stories in my blogroll…and wish everyone continued luck and good fortune
Next…My 2008 predictions.
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