It’s been clear at every point so far that 2023 is a year of questions. What will the rest of the year look like? What exactly is going on right now? And what are associations—and the members they represent—supposed to do about it?
Despite the deluge of questions, however, answers are few and far between, which can leave real estate professionals feeling uncertain and uneasy about what’s yet to come.
Let’s explore the three most important questions for today’s real estate organizations and the agents they represent—and what the answers mean for everyone involved.
What are your members facing right now?
A few months into 2023, the Canadian Real Estate Association shared insights that the beginning of the year had seen the Canadian market at a 14-year low for home sales. Since then, the National Association of REALTORS® has shown similar numbers, with home sales either decreasing or staying relatively low.
It’s a familiar story to associations across North America: It isn’t a great market, and no one really knows when that will change.
Between historical lows for inventory, sky-high inflation, and interest rates playing catch-up, real estate professionals and the organizations that support them are facing pressure on all sides.
- How do you combat negative narratives in the eyes of your agents and their clients?
- How do you help members maintain regular business in irregular circumstances?
- How do you work around market disruptors who have no interest in managing the relationships essential to real estate success?
That’s not to mention concerns over membership decreases, managing organization-wide brand presence, or even equipping members to handle consumer expectations for real estate processes.
How does this impact members' deals?
Let’s focus on the idea of market disruptors for a minute. Although they make appearances in every industry, real estate has been particularly susceptible to these disruptors in recent years, especially the dreaded sell-it-yourself technology that always stirs up fears of replacing real estate agents.
The frequency of these threats tends to create resentment toward technology as a whole. It’s an issue we consistently hear about here at Lone Wolf: Associations and MLSs struggle to introduce and encourage adoption of any technology that might address the issues their members are facing because those members feel they can’t trust it not to replace them eventually.
Ultimately, that keeps real estate deals in stasis. They can’t go any faster than they already are, they often can’t meet consumer expectations—and they face the possibility of losing out to the very system members fear.
The hidden issues of tech resentment
What people tend to forget about when it comes to technology is that it should be here to help, not replace. All of us, at one point or another, have felt fear—or at least concern—that technology would replace our roles in the workforce.
How prevalent was that feeling throughout the Industrial Revolution?
Or when robotics surged in popularity for the manufacturing industry?
Or even when a human, acutely aware of the current trends around artificial intelligence and its growing ability to write, sat down to write out every word in this piece manually?
When we ignore technology’s presence, we lose the ability to explore how it could improve our own work—and that creates the risk that it could take over for us. But when we consider how technology can help, we gain the ability to grow and evolve—which helps us establish our place in a changing world.
What does the future look like?
Though none of us have a crystal ball to consult, it’s safe enough to say that the future of real estate looks a lot like a hybrid.
It looks like the people of real estate and technology coming together to achieve things that weren’t possible before.
It looks like software connected in the most logical ways to help real estate agents and organizations establish themselves firmly in any conditions the market decides to throw at them.
It looks like a focus on quality over quantity, especially with technology, because real estate has more than enough software options—but not enough that know how to work together for a greater cause.
It looks like uncertainty—managed through predictable processes that balance every step of a real estate transaction and give everyone something to trust.
Ready for a closer look at the future of real estate?
Let’s talk about what we’re doing at Lone Wolf to support you and your members today and for all the moments yet to come.
