People Power

Can a real estate broker be replaced by a machine? I wondered about this again recently at a conference as I listened to a series of tech entrepreneurs talk about software which will schedule appointments, open lockboxes, even submit offers. Each of them touted the IMMEDIACY that their product would provide: no waiting for the buyer to get an appointment to see the property, no waiting to access the property, no waiting to submit the offer instantaneously on line. And yet, I wondered, what about the human touch? I was reminded of the article I read recently in the Times on this very topic as it relates to tech start-ups.* In fact, it seems that even on the cutting edge of the digital revolution, a place remains for that most old-fashioned of technologies: people.

I am an auction buyer, and I confess that I buy a lot on line. E-bay has changed my life, as has Amazon.com. These sites are efficient, well organized, and they create the opportunity to purchase items of low to moderate cost quickly and painlessly when I know the market for what I am buying. However, the minute problems enter the picture, I want to deal with a person. I press the “Representative” button as soon as I run into an issue after I’ve been shunted off to an automated telephone system by Verizon or my healthcare provider. Somehow I never seem to have questions that can be solved by punching buttons or choosing Option 1, Option 2, or Option 3.

I like to deploy the expertise of others when making a big buying decision. Buying a car, for example, is not an Option 1, 2, or 3 experience for most of us. Nor, for me at least, is booking a trip, in spite of what I have read about the Internet putting travel agents out of business. Good travel agents have better ideas than I do about where to go and what to do there, how to finesse booking problems, and the best way to leverage American Express miles. That’s what I want: to not waste my time trying to develop expertise in an area in which someone else already possesses it. I’d rather pay an expert, especially when it is a big ticket item like a home or a real estate investment! We humans want the knowledge of another human in these high impact situations.

Agents provide a nuanced perspective. As a buyer, do I really want to make a computer submitted offer? Or would I prefer to have an expert negotiate on my behalf, gleaning subtle information from tone of voice and what is said or remains unsaid by the other side? There were always brokers: brokerage really is the oldest profession, because people recognized early on that experts can negotiate a better deal than lay people. The latest app, replete as it may be with artificial intelligence and fuzzy logic, will never have the fingertip sense which makes the best agents so effective.

In spite of what some gearheads believe, technology is not the solution to every problem. It becomes increasingly clear that, in general, technology facilitates rather than replaces human interaction. The best real estate apps help buyers, sellers, and agents to find good properties and do basic analyses of value and cost. The best apps can take data and transliterate it into information. But no app can transliterate information into expertise. That’s what people are for!

*NYT – In a Self-Serve World, Start-Ups Find Value in Human Helper