Good Agents Listen to the Market

It is always interesting when science makes news as it did last week. The Los Angeles Times ran an article titled, "'We can hear the universe': Scientists detect gravitational waves, predicted by Einstein." First, let me begin by saying that Einstein must have been from the future. The things that he predicted and the observations he made are likely to astound us forever.

Einstein said that when things happen in the universe, like planets exploding, it is possible to hear them. That waves of sound must travel through space. Historically, we have only been able to observe the universe through light. Now we can measure the wavelength. Some really sharp scientists finally proved Einstein’s theory by building two L-shaped labs – one in Louisiana and another in Washington. They shoot a beam of light, the width of a photon, two miles in each direction that bounces off of a mirror at the end of the L and comes back to the intersection. If they come back at the same time, they cancel each other out.  If they come back at different times, then a wave from the universe has passed through the beam. If both labs detect the same wave effect at the same time, then it must be true. Einstein’s theory is proven!

That is complicated and crazy – but scientists agree that the wave that they detected was a ripple caused billions of years ago when two black holes collided, chewing up more than 50 planets in a matter of 20 milliseconds – perhaps the biggest universal event we know about.

Listening In

Great real estate agents listen to the universe, too. Like scientists, they study data and produce charts that show ripples in the real estate market. Looking backwards, we can gain an understanding of what the future is like, given economic indicators like interest rates, unemployment, days on market, list price to sell price analysis, etc. You have a great tool in Realtors Property Resource (RPR) to gain these insights. Be sure to run RPR reports when you are going on a listing presentation or working with a buyer to put an offer on a house. If you want to display this data on your website, use RBintel.com.

The new wave of listening to the real estate universe understands buyer demand. I think that all of us are fascinated to learn about the volume of consumer traffic to real estate websites. ListTrac is listening to this traffic for the very first time. I do not think that any of us ever though that there are more consumers looking at data from the MLS than portals like Zillow, Realtor.com, Homes.com, etc. The way that ListTrac supports agents at leveraging this information is a breakthrough to sellers.

Another breakthrough technology in listening to the market is Buyside. They aggregate buyer data to look at market demand for properties.

If you use these emerging tools in real estate, you will have an edge over your competition. As a general observation, real estate agents and brokers are laggards at adopting technology. But the early adopters that embrace new real estate tools and science will be able to take advantage of the first waves of success long before their competitors.