Depending upon who you talk to the future for the Real Estate in Australia could be vibrant or bleak depending upon where you stand. The inescapable fact is that the real estate market is changing and whether you wish to be part of that change probably is an indicator of whether you are going to survive the change or not.
As with most industries the Internet has changed how we do business and surprisingly the real estate industry has been quite slow to adopt those changes. Sure they adopted the concept of the web site at an early stage and yes they understood interactivity and all that that entails but what they were surprisingly slow to grasp was that the Internet would actually wrestle control from those who had hitherto enjoyed the power of control.
With the real estate market that control had hitherto lain with the Realtors / Agents call them whatever and their counterparts within the legal profession. For an agreed rate, a rate that has to be said that a great many people have thought excessive for some time, these twin professions acted as a fulcrum and point of control between buyers and sellers. No pay no gain if you pardon the alteration to the widely accepted maxim and in this case if you were not prepared to pay their quite large fees then you couldnt sell your property. You were quite naturally shafted and there was nothing you could actually do about it.
However enter stage left in late nineties the Internet and all of this changed. The Internet is affectively structured round the correct understanding and implication of three main concepts or laws. Moores law, Metcalfes Law and Ronald Coases Theory of the Firm. Understand these theories and you understand how business is transacted and how we exist profitably in the age of the Internet.
The main result of the above theories and concepts is the transfer of power from the pre existing controls to the buyer and the greater empowerment of the consumer. Coupled with this transfer of control and power came a tumbling of pre existing fee structures and fixed costs. Nowhere was this more evident in the real estate industry where quite frankly people were waiting just for this moment to happen and adopt this change with a relish they did.
No longer were people prepared to pay 6% of a transaction and why should they pay anything at all when they could effectively now develop channels with which to successfully market their own properties.
Cue the rise of the FSBO or For Sale By Owner. Now enterprising individuals can actually market their own properties to a growing number of like minded buyers who are becoming more and more interested in doing business this way. The concept of the FSBO has matured rapidly and is now becoming more and more widely accepted. It is now not uncommon to see more and more houses and properties being marketed in this way and more and more successful transactions are the result. Long live the FSBO!.
