Some real estate agents are using wireless camera phones to transmit photos of homes to their clients. This photo was taken with one of Sprint’s PCS Vision wireless camera phones.
When real estate broker John Conroy needed to show two roommates an apartment several weeks ago, he faced a dilemma that many in the business confront at one point or another.
The roommates, musicians from New York, couldn’t be in Boston at the same time to look at apartments. Only one roommate could make it to see the Brighton apartment that was available for rent, but the pair needed to find a place quickly.
So Conroy, using a wireless camera phone that was loaned to him as part of a promotion, sent photos of the apartment’s interior to the out-of-state roommate via e-mail. The duo used the photos to decide which apartment to choose and eventually settled on one.
Without the camera phone, “it would have cost me a commission, and it would have put them behind the eight ball in terms of getting an apartment,” said Conroy, owner of East Coast Realty in Boston’s Allston neighborhood.
In a hot real estate market, where speed can be the difference between renting a spacious apartment in a desirable neighborhood or landing in a tiny basement unit, technology can be a consumer’s and real estate agent’s best friend. But while Conroy, who is looking into purchasing two or three camera phones, is up on the latest technology, many other Realtors are not taking advantage of technology that can help them expand and improve their business, according to real estate experts.
“The vast majority of agents are not using technology to its potential,” said Matthew Ferrara, founder of Matthew Ferrara Seminars, a company that provides technology training to real estate professionals nationwide.
Ferrara said real estate professionals don’t necessarily need new gadgets like camera phones if they learn how to use “common technology” they already own. Many sales agents, for example, have cellular phones and personal digital assistants such as Palm Pilots but don’t use all their timesaving functions and features, he said.
He speculated that very few agents are using camera phones, which are relatively new on the market and can cost as much as $350. However, many agents don’t realize they can capture and transmit photos of homes with their Palm Pilots, and Ferrara said agents can download photos onto their Palm Pilot or spend a few dollars more for an upgraded color Palm Pilot with a built-in camera.
‘Silver Bullets’
Ferrara spends a lot of time teaching agents how to do “simple” tasks, like using the cell phone to check e-mail. Ferrara believes that is an important task given a study released 18 months ago by the National Association of Realtors, which revealed that one out of two e-mails were answered by Realtors more than two days after it was sent, and less than 5 percent of e-mails were answered within an hour.
Some agents needlessly spend hundreds of dollars on new software packages, when the multiple listing services they belong to offer the same features. Most MLSs have between 50 to 200 functions, yet most of the time Realtors only use 10 functions, according to Ferrara.
“One of the problems that agents have is they don’t have a good business plan and they don’t know how technology fits into the plan. When they buy technology, they are buying silver bullets and that makes them easy prey to snake oil salesmen,” he said.
If agents really want to improve their business, they should look to their customers, according to tech experts.
“The customers are leading the way when it comes to the use of technology relating to real estate,” agrees John M. Peckham III, executive director of the Real Estate CyberSpace Society, which has 4,000 members in 28 countries.
In the past, real estate agents controlled all the information about for-sale properties and helped consumers find homes. But today customers can go online and see what homes are for sale, take virtual tours of homes and compare sales data, explained Peckham.
Real estate agents are now in a position where they can use available technology to interpret the data for customers and to help them negotiate and facilitate the transaction quickly. “They help interpret the market and facilitate the transaction,” he said.
One timesaving tool that can help real estate agent facilitate the homebuying and selling process faster is transaction platform software. Using the software, the agent can maintain a platform – just like another page on a Web site – that buyers and sellers can access to track a transaction. The clients can check to see when and if mortgages have been approved or they can view a deed or the status of an offer.
Peckham estimates a transaction platform can save an agent five hours or more over the course of transaction.
Conroy, the Allston real estate broker who is considering purchasing camera phones, believes technology can boost business. “We do a great deal of business via the Internet,” he said.
Recently, Conroy invested in a portable computer hard drive that is small enough to attach to his key chain in case a disaster destroys the computer equipment in his office.
“[Technology’s] pretty critical,” said Conroy. “I think that it definitely gives you an edge. You can get by having a couple of ads in the newspaper, but you’re not going to get ahead.”
Aglaia Pikounis may be reached at apikounis@thewarrengroup.com.
