Jeff’s foresight changed shopping. What is next for our industry? 

Online scrolling dropped a 1997 Jeff Bezos video into my feed the other day. In 1997 Jeff heard a startling statistic – that web usage was growing at 2300% per year. He also had the foresight to know that the internet was in its infancy!

Whenever I come across this kind of insight, I can’t help but reflect on it and then of course I can’t help but try and relate it to, in some way, what I am up to, or what I would like to be up to!

The first thing that comes to mind of course is this shift that we are encountering in the real estate agency space. 

20-odd years ago when I kicked off my real estate career, it was all office based. There were these ‘renegade’ agents that liked to work away from the office – they would turn up with suit pockets (hang on, did those guys wear suits?) full of ‘list and sells’ (in the days when you didn’t need a listing signed first and you didn’t need to do AML either)…  That, in itself, seems like another lifetime. 

But because of the costs of printing and scanning, and the lack of other digital tools, almost all real estate work was office based. 
​​​​​​​
To my knowledge, around the time Mr. Bezos noticed an uptick in web usage, there were no remote agencies in little ol’ NZ. 

How things have changed. 

On account of lockdowns and technology, there are not many sales people throughout the country who don’t work in some kind of hybrid way. There are now hundreds in NZ who choose to work remotely either in a traditional ‘office’ or in one of the distributed working agencies. 

We have seen Tall Poppy and Arizto really move into the remote working space in a very dominant fashion. International businesses like @realty and EXP have set up shop. 

And along with Independent Agent, there are a number of other varieties of the same kind of thing offering a bespoke service.

Yes, things have changed. 

We have seen this growth first hand of course. Four years ago we had one salesperson. I checked the REA records and today there are 50 licences under our agency. 
​​​​​​​
A 4,900% increase in sales people in just 4 years*. 
​​​​​​​
If you think that you will still be selling in 5 years time, you want to think about your plans. Chances are that the industry is on the move, and that this style of salesperson and agency work style is in its infancy. I think that there are more changes to come. But it’s going to start online, it’s going to be decentralised, and I don’t think that bricks and mortar mega offices are going to be the heroes in this story.

And as an owner of a couple of retail shops, which are always cycling through vacancies as traditional businesses fold, I can tell you, it pays to be on the right side of change. Ask Jeff. He will say the same.

*The mathematicians amongst you will guess that I am playing with numbers a bit here – you would guess that we had a very high percentage increase in year one, and that percentage increase will have dropped – and you would be pretty much right. It was approximately like this: 

Y1 900%
Y2 100%
Y3 50%
Y4 66% 

Independent Agent would like to look after about 200 salespeople and I am excited because at 50 agents, we only need to double and then double again to reach that target.