Will the Internet Make Real Estate Agents Obsolete?

 We dont think so. On-line air reservation programs were supposed to render travel agents obsolete and at first that appeared to be the case.  Not any more. The internet airline reservation system has become so complex, so riddled with choices, so chock-a-block full of options that the consumer can no longer easily negotiate for the ticket desired.   Faced with an impenetrable thicket of choices and competing programs claiming to offer the best and lowest priced tickets many flyers put down the computer mouse return to their professional travel agents. Just get me from here to there on these dates at these convenient times, at the lowest cost and dont use my flyer miles if you dont have to.  And the travel agent, someone you speak with face-to-face, delivers. You dont come staggering out of your den with a migraine after hours on the net clicking buttons or holding on to a land line waiting for a voice at the airline.

Honey, I just saved us $50.  Wheres my Motrin bottle?

Some of the same people who promised to drive travel agents out of business with online reservation programs, promised the same result for real estate agents. On-line real estate searches and property information programs would make the agents dinosaurs.  Who needs agents the internet innovators trumpeted? You can use the internet to find properties, price properties, get a mortgage, and even negotiate on the internet and save fees. 

Its not that easy. An overload of information pushes the consumers back to professional agents. Every season, thanks to state legislatures, buying a home becomes not less but more complex.  Choices of what on-line real estate helper to use proliferate.  Competing programs claim to have the best information or to be the site to find your dream home.  More and more information on homes now appears on the internet: whats for sale, photos, property histories, charts, stats, economists opinions all these facts present an overload of information for home buyers.   The more details on pricing, staging, title, zoning, and environmental restrictions on property are made available the more the consumer appreciates what real agents do for them.  

Its not as simple as they may have thought. The internet is a useful tool, but competition among the new real estate models compels them to offer more and more information that discloses the complexity of real estate practice and why its best practiced by licensed agents who know how to interpret that information.

Honey, lets call our real agent and have them take it from here.  Now, thats a reservation that will work no headache required.