After a decade-long career in IT, Jacob Clayton switched to real estate, getting his license in 2006 and launching his own real estate group in 2008. In 2009, his website was lauded by the Massachusetts Association of Realtors as the best individual agent site in the commonwealth.
Late last year, his firm was acquired by Concord-based Barrett & Co. – the firm of 2011 MAR president Laurie Cadigan – in part to help boost Barrett’s social media presence.
Jacob Clayton
Title: Executive Director of Business Development at Barrett & Co. Age: 40
Experience: 5 years
Q: You had an IT background before you got into real estate? What did you do in IT?
A: I started out in IT right at the bottom, doing tech support, which is the lowest of the low…and eventually I worked my way up, got into server stuff, kept learning more and more. And each time I made a move to a different company, I took a little step up. My last job was at UMass Lowell doing project management, managing the online advising system. All along I enjoyed doing creative stuff. The web stuff and graphic stuff was something I did on the side and integrated in as much as possible.
Q: How did you get into real estate?
A: I thought about buying property when I was 19. I had no money…when I finally did buy my first place, I loved it, it was everything I had ever hoped it would be. I just thought it was awesome. And the process fascinated me. How little I knew about it, how much money I was spending, trusting this person who I’d really met just from calling on the phone…so it was just interesting. I had a guy in the building I had bought a condo in, he had his own little small shop, and he said if I was interested and wanted to take the test he’d show me the ropes. So I said “Sure.” And that’s how I got started.
Q: There’s a lot of people in the business who still seem a little scared of the internet. Was that something you saw right away?
A: It’s kind of astonishing to me – I feel like I really have a unique perspective, having a true technical background. It’s interesting to me, and very challenging. The real estate industry is not alone in…not being able to get its arms around progressive technolog[ies]. But I do think it’s a real problem.
Q: Is the problem that people are reluctant to embrace new technology, or is it more that people aren’t even aware of what they could be doing that would help their business?
A: You’ve read the statistics; you know what the average Realtor makes. It’s not all the glitz and glamour that people might think. It’s not an easy business to be successful in and be good at. The ones that are really good, people that have been in it a long time, 10, 15, 20, 25 years – they have built a reputation. It’s a true craft for them, something they’ve dedicated their life to. But those people are not the [technologically] savvy folks…I think there’s definitely a gap. People don’t get what it can do to help them. But I’ve found even that a lot of people don’t know, when they put a listing in the MLS, what happens to it, how it spreads out into the world. There’s a lot that has changed in the industry that individual realtors haven’t really gotten a grasp of. So it’s a multilevel problem.
Q: Is that something you were thinking about when you went to design your own website?
A: I had been designing websites on the side for a long time, and even before I became a Realtor, when I was just interested in real estate, I played around with making my own real estate website. So it went through many different versions…I didn’t really look at what the industry was doing. I looked at what consumers were doing. And what consumers were doing was going to Trulia, going to Zillow, Homes.com. And they were finding them through Google searches, through keywords, social media and blogging. And I thought…there seemed to be a definite need out there that I thought I could fill, and that was how I could get in. I talked to a lot of people, too. I thought, I can’t get the buyer or seller that’s 50, 60 years old. They’ve probably bought and sold a couple times, and they have someone that they’ve worked with for years and are dedicated to, it’s going to be tough for a young guy like me to come up and get a leg up on them. So I thought, I’ll be going after a different generation. I’ll be going after the generation that reads blogs, that embrace technology and not traditional brick and mortar…[the people] that embrace the kinds of sales that are less [hard] sell and more information provider. That’s what I thought I could try to do, and what people 25, 30, 35 were looking for.
Jacob Clayton’s Top Five Basic Principles To Get the Most Out of Your Technology:
- Your website is still important – social media’s great, but the place where consumers view your listings is still the most important place for getting their attention and business.
- Think through the next step for the consumer: A QR code on a sign does you no good if the sign’s on a heavily trafficked street where people can’t stop to scan it.
- To keep people on your site, make sure they can access the information they want – including pictures, maps, days on market.
- Adopt new tech when you see consumers want it, not just because other agents have it.
- Don’t assume people will contact you for more information – people will go to another site much more readily than they’ll pick up a phone.
