The real estate industry as we know it could be set for a complete overhaul within the next decade, a new survey of PRDnationwide agents has revealed.
According to the poll, the majority of agents believe there will be less face-to-face contact with customers, more reliance on technology and more international buyers within the decade.
PRDnationwide Ballina/Lennox Head sales consultant Brett Jones said the next ten years would see the roles of agents change dramatically.
“With search engines and social networking controlling the buyers, the agent’s role will be to control and manage the listings in more intense way,” he said.
“There will be fewer agents with larger areas to cover,” he said.
Mr Jones said agents would no longer look after a local area or town, but an entire region.
“Generation Y will look to get more out of an agent with less face to face communication. Social networking and instant communication will be a key in the industry,” he said.
“We are seeing currently business on Facebook or Twitter - this is just the beginning of a huge change of things ahead.”
PRDnationwide New Farm director Adam Gray agrees that the day of the small corner agency is dead.
"I do believe agencies will get bigger and service larger areas,” he said.
Mr Gray said video will play a much bigger part in the selling process.
"We will be putting a cinema in our building to showcase off-the-plan projects. We already have the room designed and are waiting for the price of technology of creating the programs to drop - they are nearly affordable now,” he said.
“By 2020 we are likely to have planes that can fly from around the world to Australia within 5 hours. Richard Branson is suggesting this could happen in 5 years. When this happens, Australia will be the flavour of the world. Instead of having 20 million people buying property in Australia we will have the potential of 7 billion. I have seen what happened in Turkey when the Germans and English decided they wanted to holiday there. Watch what happens here.”
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