Disruption fatigue

Disruption fatigue is what happens after spending a decade reading and hearing about all the stuff that is going to disrupt the real estate industry . . . and nothing does. The industry has changed in the last decade but so has everything else.

Lets look at what disruption is not:

1. Home search websites or portals of any flavor. Sure in the last decade they have changed but so have a lot of other websites.

2. Location based apps that locate homes for sale. Apps have not proved to be particularly disruptive and have become ubiquitous just like the smartphones so many of us use.

3. Real estate brokerages/companies with new ways of charging clients and compensating real estate agents. Business models come and go but the larger model of real estate companies and real estate agents remains unchanged.

4. Any service to consumers that is paid for by real estate agents is not disruptive to the status quo but instead supports our basic business model.

5. Putting more middle men or web sites between home buyers or sellers and real estate agents who are also considered middlemen is not disruptive. It is just another way that middlemen can get a bigger piece of the pie.

Isn’t booking a flight, or hiring a cab  just like buying a house? It is that kind of thinking that has gotten the industry nowhere in the past decade. Most businesses have been impacted by new technologies and the idea of change is a very old idea.

As an industry we should be considering how we could use the bodies of unethical and incompetent agents as an alternative fuel or how we can stop the  money-grubbing corporations that manage to feed on the industry without giving anything back except legions of incompetent agents who are going to follow systems and get rich.