Real Estate Perfect Storm

  As we try to navigate a real estate market with record housing availability shortages the conversations by potential buyers, sellers and REALTORS are all speculating on when does the "Bubble Burst?" That is an interesting question because we are traveling unfamiliar ground. My speculation is there is no burst in sight, unless caused by an outside government causation, and that would be a calamity not a solution. 

 We have experienced a perfect storm that has created the market we are experiencing. It is unlikely it will be corrected any time soon. It began in 2007 with Congress passing the Sarbanes Oxley Act that changed our nationally required accounting for all financial institutions from Mark to Mark to Mark to Market which arguably created the housing market crash in 2008. I have several blogs explaining that so I won't go through it here other than to say it created an artificial market value collapse. But that flooded the market with depressed value houses and spurred a buy up by Wall Street buying the houses cheap and putting them into REITs as rentals and selling stock in the portfolio. This process ended up moving hundreds of thousands, if not millions of houses from private ownership into rental inventory. 

 Next part of the storm was the building industry. While the market was flooded with low priced inventory it made building for a profit nearly impossible. So builders, developers and contracting companies in all aspects of the building industry closed their doors. We lost 1.6 million people in the building business from 2008-2010. The industry has been building approximately 20 million homes every decade for many decades, but from 2008-2016 only built 5 million. Reducing the available homes that should have been here further. 

 Then add to this mix that the Millennials, the largest generation in history, came to prime home buying age. Yet, they were bottled up for quite some time because while the stock market grew during the time period from 2009 -2016 jobs and wages didn't. In fact, during that time, more 18-33 year olds, for the first time in history, were still living at home with their parents than on their own. New household formations, moving out on their own,  that traditionally always ran 1.3 million a year dropped to around 300,000 a year every year during that period. So the pent up demand hit levels never seen before.  During this time average household earnings dropped on average of 5,000.00 a year.  For the first time in history, more business closed each year than opened, and labor participation rates dropped to record levels far lower than at the bottom of the Great Depression, one in five households had no one employed. 

 Starting in 2017 real wage growth happened for the first time in twenty eight years, and for the first time in that time, labor participation rates actually increased. So now the Millennials were released to start buying their first homes. But the homes didn't exist. The builder community finally got back up to their pre-crash numbers of 1.3 million new homes in 2018, but that didn't do anything but keep the gap from getting worse, it didn't reduce the gap. It is said that 40 million more homes must be built to just house the Millennials and legal immigration. 

 Wall Street has complicated the builders catching up. With the unprecedented government spending over the last two years, printing and velocitizing 80% of the nation's money supply in just the last two years. This has made investors terrified of having their money in cash because its value is evaporating in front of our eyes through massive inflation. Wall Street is also uncomfortable with commercial real estate, especially office complexes after seeing the Zooming of business the last couple years. So they are buying up single family real estate competing with buyers, but brining cash and not worrying about appraisals. Now they are compounding that issue by contracting with large builders for billions to build out entire subdivisions of new homes for the Wall Street investment houses to turn into REITs and rentals. There are only so many resources of manpower and building materials and this is not closing the gap on homes families can purchase. 

 With all this, it will be quite some time before this shortage gets corrected and brings balance to the housing market. 

Never Assume That You Cannot Make History

 It is easy to sometimes feel small and insignificant in the grander scheme of things. Maybe especially when we are facing so many things out of our control as we find during the COVID-19 forced lockdown. It is almost like we have all been sent to our rooms and grounded. Those of us who have been deemed "essential" get to be on a form of work release, where we can work, but then must come back home while we are still grounded. But, you are much more powerful than you think. It is amazing what passion can do, be it a passion to change the world, or at least your world. That passion can be fueled by a dream of what can be, or it could be to prove someone was wrong about you.

 This morning, while reading a speech from Supreme Court Justice, Neil Gorsuch, I heard the story of one seemingly insignificant college sophomore who made a huge change that went under the waterline of history. Highly significant, just not very well noticed.  How familiar are you with the 27th Amendment of the United States Constitution? I am a history nut, and had no idea about this story.

The 27th Amendment was written by James Madison in 1789 and was intended to be ratified along with the original ten along with the Bill of Rights. However, it languished unratified for nearly two hundred years. That is until a 19 year young college sophomore, Gregory Watson, at the University of Texas was given an assignment in a course on government. He was to write a research paper so off to the library he went to find a topic, he looked through books on the Constitution.

"I'll never forget this as long as I live, I pulled out a book that has written in it a chapter of amendments that Congress has sent the state legislators, but which not enough state legislators approved in order to become part of the Constitution. And this one jumped right out at me." 
Greg Watson

The Amendment provides that: "No law varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of representatives shall have intervened."
This way, legislators could not pass a pay raise for themselves without having to face the voters so they could face the music so to speak if the voters were not okay with it.

 The Amendment was ratified by a few states but not enough to ratify into law. Watson decided to write his research paper on the idea that this amendment could be dug up and still be ratified if enough states would get on board. The idea sounded ridiculous and his professor gave him a C for it. Watson, didn't believe he deserved a C and it made him mad enough to prove her wrong. Watson said, "I thought right then and there, I am going to get this thing ratified." And he went to war, writing state legislators and members of Congress to help him with their home states. Most of the replies were negative, if they replied at all. However eventually, a Senator from Maine passed the idea to a friend back home, and Maine ratified the amendment in 1982.

 Watson, now really believed he could do this, and started a campaign of writing letters to every to every state legislator he thought might help. Soon, his campaign started to build momentum and several states would ratify the amendment every year. Finally in 1992, more than 200 years since James Madison had written it, and a decade after Watson wrote that fateful research paper, the 27th Amendment finally passed. By the way, when the professor found out, on March 1 2017, she filed paperwork to officially change that 1982 "C" into an A.

 When asked why he did it, Watson said something that should inspire us all: "I wanted to demonstrate that one extremely dedicated, extremely energetic person could push this through. I think I demonstrated that."  That's hard to argue with.

What might you do if you caught on fire inside for it?

Independence to Interdependence The Key To The Next Level.

 Thirty years ago, my mentor Rick Setzer, one of the most brilliant businessmen and leaders I have ever met tried to teach me the concept of Interdependence. I could get it conceptually, but never could understand it emotionally. I could get it in my head, but not my heart. The purpose of this blog is to help you cut short a journey that took me thirty years to really understand.

 What Rick told me was that as children we are all dependent upon others for our needs and wants, hopefully as we get older we become independent and self sufficient. However, if we want to truly build a large business or enterprise of any kind, that is sustainable, we must learn how to move from independent to interdependent. For my fiercely independent mind this was a very simple idea in theory, but nearly impossible in practice. I have long been a strongly committed control freak that found it difficult to let go, to trust that someone else could do something as well, as quickly, or as cost effectively as I could myself. So, to be honest, I was a control freak and cheap.

 My pattern was I would know I needed help, hire someone, but when they didn't do it as well or as fast I would, I would then take the tasks back.  One of the major turning points for me to start understanding was reading the books, "Cashflow Quadrant," by Robert Kiyosaki, it explains the emotional reason why people behave as they do in business, and why, they "get it with their heads" but their hearts won't let them do what they need to do. Also the book "E-Myths Revisited" by Michael Gerber, explains what structure that the typical entrepreneur refuses to put into place (because of those emotions) that causes them to fail. Please do yourself a favor and read them both, they are two sides of the same coin, structure and the emotions that block you from doing the structure.

  Two of the greatest lessons I had both were happening at the same time. One was accepting a job as VP of Sales for a new home builder that had nineteen locations, with nineteen sales people across nine counties. Clearly I couldn't be in all of them at the same time and had to learn to empower others and lead by serving them rather than trying to boss them. The second was accepting the position of Tournament Director for my two son's school wrestling club. This was a new position for the club as we added tournaments as fundraisers to get away from candy and pizza sales. This entailed staging and running 4-5 major tournaments a year, that each needed about three months prep time. It required about one hundred volunteers in place from early Friday afternoons on Tournament weekends, through all day Saturday, and maybe Sunday. If you want to learn leadership skills, run a volunteer organization where you cannot boss anyone about anything or they walk out the door. Both of these helped me start to understand interdependence.

 Working in a real estate model the last ten years that operates in a servant role rather than one that's top-down, where instead of hiring agents to work for the firm, we are hired by the agents to support their businesses at scale to free them up to more effective and efficient with their time. Each are independent contractors who we work together to make both theirs and our businesses work. The greatest challenge I see is that most of them, like myself, struggle to let go and go interdependent. This is not just a REALTOR thing, I see it in almost every small business owner, commission sales person or franchise owner. All would benefit greatly from reading those books.

 When you look at the inner workings of a real estate office, it is its on ecosystem. Ours does thousands of transactions per year, and you see many other companies who orbit this ecosystem, companies like title insurance, P&C insurance, mortgage, home warranties, inspection, photographers, marketing and any number of other industries that sustain themselves on those transactions. It actually operates almost like a small city where businesses coexist, compete, and actually support each other.

 Recently, I have also branched out into working in the Senior Services industry. What I find there is exactly the same things, the same dynamics playing out. The same difficulties letting go of tasks, the same difficulties of finding that interdependence space where we can all understand that the fear of, or belief in a scarcity mindset, is actually our biggest enemy.  What has become very clear, to me, is that the more we can break down the silos of information, of resources that can be available across the platform of individual companies and industries the better we can serve our clients.

 If you haven't read "Delivering Happiness" by Tony Hsieh, or their follow up book from Zappos, "The Power of Wow" by the Zappo employees, I strongly recommend them. The second one explains their adventure into Holacracy management style breaking down the traditional hierarchical systems we are all familiar with. They are honest about the bumps in the road they have fought through. But as you read it, you will start to realize all they are really doing is going from Dependent to Independent to Interdependent. 

 What could we all do together, if we truly understood and embraced how together we can solve our client's issues better than any one of us can alone? If we understood that there is no such thing as scarcity but abundance? This topic will be continued. Please if you have questions let's talk.
Jim Morgan 317-610-7458 or jim@abilityplus.com

Vitamin C for REALTORS to Ward Off The Zillow Virus.

 If you were asked to choose a mascot for the real estate industry, what would you choose? If I was asked, I believe I would have to choose the Ostrich, specifically the image of it's head buried in the sand. The entirety of the real estate industry is under siege and all of our trade associations are silent, our big brands are talking about what cool technology they have, brokers are worried about turf wars, and agents seem oblivious to what is going on. 

 What is going on? Wall Street is pumping billions into big tech and data companies who are targeting the commissions that brokers and agents make their livings. One of their newest weapons is the iBuyer programs where they will be able to control the market by controlling the listings. They want to either buy the listings, or if not, identify who wants to sell then sell that lead to "preferred" agents at 35% today and an every escalating percentage as they get agents hooked on the model.

 The new CEO of Zillow has openly admitted that his goal is to tighten down his Zestimate model to go from the absurd numbers they are known for, to their actual offer to buy anyone's home. Their goal is that you go to your house Zestimate and then you can click and they will buy your home then and there. Zillow is only one of the many sharks in the water of iBuyer. If agents understand this threat they don't participate in the online chats and threads about it, from there it is amazing how little is understood in our industry. Of course, if agents are depending upon NAR or their local boards to explain it, no wonder they have no idea what is going on. From what I have seen agents dismiss this out of hand. However, the big players like Realtor.com partnered with opCity, Redfin just partnered with Open Door to try to combat it. So, those most tuned into the big data are most engaged in what they see happening.

 Maybe the trade associations and big brands are all mute because of the ongoing lawsuits against our cooperative agreements with NAR. Maybe their attorneys have told them to stay quiet, but this is a poor time to be silent, it is a time to "go to the mattresses." We are in a war if we realize it or not. Now the Department of Justice is also involved looking into the NAR agreements as well. If you don't think it is having an impact look at what it has done to REALOGY's stock. REALOGY is the largest real estate company in the world, they own Coldwell Banker, Century 21, ERA, Sotheby's and Better Homes and Gardens, and as of last week you could buy a share of their stock for the same price as a drink at Starbucks for 5.75 per share, 70% lower than last year.

 Okay, those may be the problems, what are the solutions for an agent that doesn't have billions to invest to fight Wall Street? The answer is vitamin "C." At the Detroit Economic Club in 1999, Michael Dell, spoke on the Three "C's" of E-Commerce. Those three "C's" are just as relevant today as they were in the infancy of the Internet. Those three C's are what is required for a successful business model.

First "C" is Commerce - You must have a business that has products or services that people want, are willing to pay for, and are willing to pay the price you need to sell.

Second "C" is Content - You must have a client user friendly process, where it is a pleasure to do business with you, not inconvenient or a hassle but an experience that they enjoy, will be willing to do again and to recommend to others.

Those two are required for ANY business.

Third "C" is Community - This is the one that Dell said NO ONE on the Internet has figured out, I would now say other than Social Media. The key to Community is that once you attract a client from where ever, how do you continue to engage and stay top of mind. How do you get through the noise. It is 500% less expensive to maintain a client relationship than to acquire a new one.

 As an industry we have allowed this attack on us by allowing our practices to become transactional. We, as an industry, spend 94% of our marketing budgets in lead acquisition, then once transaction is over move on to the next one. This makes us vulnerable to the big data giants taking away our businesses. Also as an industry we mistakenly believed that our only value was our data and guarded it from the consumer, that breech of understanding is the very thing that allowed Zillow and others to move in between us and our own clients. However, all we have to do to inoculate ourselves from that is focus on Community. 

 We need to make ourselves THEIR Trusted Advisor, their Go To Expert, Their Advocate that they wouldn't think to go without. How do we do this? First we have to have systems in place that guarantee that we provide a great experience with our Commerce and Content phase. Then we need to be accessible and experience based not only throughout the process of their transaction, but from then on. We need to be engaged with them forever. They need to hear from us through a multimedia approach at least 33 times per year forever. The big Data will not be able to compete with this, they can do automated drips, which we will also use, but they won't talk to them on the phone, take them for coffee, invite them to client appreciation events. Doing this approach means you have to offload a lot of what you are doing today. If it is not talking to a client or negotiating for a client, it should be someone else doing it.  In other words, you need systems that keep you out of day to day activities and free you up for high priority, low urgency, business development.

 If this sounds good, but you have no idea how to get there, let me know. We have developed systems that you can plug into that will take care of 60-70% of your touches and all of your high urgency transactional activities. This way you will have your Vitamin "C" to ward off any sort of Zillow infection for your business.

The More High Tech The More We Need High Touch.

 Have you ever asked yourself, what is going to happen to real estate? With all the Big Data, Deep Discounters, Wall Street IPO's, Zillows, and more, it feels like Dorothy must have with the Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh my! What must we do to compete with the billions being thrown at the relationship between us and future buyers and sellers?

 Let's look backward to get a better view of forward. Remember, practices always continue to change, but principles never do. Let me tell you my own, most terrifying moment. I had about half of my income coming from selling new homes and half from a distributorship for a large marketing company. On Tuesday morning one week in early 1999, I attended our builder's sales meeting where they said the entire company was going on computer, there would be no paperwork everything would be done on the computer and online. This terrified me, I had never touched a computer before, I had heard they blew up, and that didn't sound good. Anything with a keyboard intimidated me, because I only passed typing in school because my coach was my teacher. I then figured, okay, I will just focus on my marketing company, until that next Saturday, when I went to a convention where they announced they were going 100% online! I honestly wondered if the world had passed me by, if I was going to live in a cardboard box somewhere. It was the most terrifying week of my entire life and career. Have you ever felt like you were being run over by change?

 My response, once I was able to breath again, was I have to learn this stuff. I bought a "WebTV" set up and learned how to navigate the "World Wide Web." Keep in mind, this was only three years after the Internet was accessible to the general public. This was a brand new world. Once I gained confidence, because I learned I could learn it, it was something that I dove deep into. That one week, after shaking off the initial terror, I knew one thing for sure. I NEVER wanted to feel that way again, it was my Scarlett O'Hara moment, "As God as my witness, I will never be hungry again!"

 There is some wisdom from the past we can all learn from today, the principles haven't changed. In 1982, John Naisbitt wrote the book "Mega Trends" this was the very dawning of the information age. His central point is just as relevant today as then, actually much more so. That is "The more the world goes High Tech, the more you need to become High Touch."

 In 1999, one of the early leaders of Internet business modeling was Michael Dell, of Dell Computers. He spoke at the Detroit Economics Club about building a competitive advantage in an Internet economy. He taught about the critical C's to building a sustainable business in the Internet age.
Those three C's are Content, Commerce and Community.

Content - A product or service that people want and are willing to buy at a price that they will pay.

Commerce - Ease of ordering, ease of transactional activities. No drama.

Community - Building a relationship with company, consumers and providers.

 Dell, lamented that he, and at the time, no one had figured out Community. That he would spend millions driving people to his website to buy a Dell Computer, but then when they needed another one, he had to spend that money all over again that there wasn't an ongoing relationship to capture them before they shopped around. In the brick and mortar world, our community was not only around where we lived, but on the roads to and from our house to work and to the kids schools and church. Almost every where we shopped was on one of those paths. If we took a new job, kids changed schools, we changed out shopping community. We may have gotten mad at a clerk at the grocery and vowed to never go back, and we wouldn't at least until the next week. Because it was on the way. Now, every website is already on the way. So we have to find ways to create a community that has stickiness. How?

 Can we compete with the multi-billion dollar companies that are trying to get in front of and in between you and them by outspending them? By out advertising to the over all markets? Highly unlikely. However, we can go back to John Naisbitt's advice and raise the High Touch level to counter their High Tech. We need to create a consistent WOW Experience for our clients, one that they will refer to others as well as never consider going with strangers that some Big Data company sells their name to. How do you do that? Being consistently top of mind when not actively working with them, that they hear from you, through a consistent multi-media approach at least 33 times per year. Those would include at least a couple invitations to client appreciation events hopefully for some face to face time. How are you going to do all that and work with your active clients? Work 24 instead of 18 hours a day? No, you can't do it if you are trying to do all the work involved, not possible. That is why we as an industry have fallen prey to these companies, we got too busy for our clients.

 I realized a lesson from my own experience. I had a bank account with the same company since I was six years old. The bank's name changed from American National to Society, to Key and I stayed. I owned businesses for years and new the branch managers, the tellers and even was able to call the president if I needed something. I was loyal to the relationships. Then we realized at one point we didn't go in as often, and every time we did we had to show our identification to do anything because no one there knew us and we didn't know them. So we decided that if we don't have any relationships there, we should go to one of the big banks who has more bells and whistles. So if we aren't known we might as well make things more convenient. Your clients will make the same choice if you allow them to be disconnected. They lost my community.

 If you are still doing all your own transaction management, that is taking your time and squandering it at lower dollar value which takes away from the time you can be doing real business development by staying top of mind with your clients during the process and after.  If you don't have a solution contact me, I will be happy to walk you through what you can do to fix it. Let me also recommend that you read the book "The Experience Economy" to get ideas on how to truly separate yourself and your business and enjoy not worrying about what the disruptors are doing. We have a HUGE advantage over all the Zillow's and Big Data companies, but we have to exploit it, that is to be the ones who focus on the Community with our past clients, sphere and database. We must be that Trusted Advisor that is top of mind for your help with real estate. In our firm, we have several tier levels of automated multimedia marketing touches to cover 20-25 of those 33 touches for you, so you can focus on the highest value ones yourself. Even better we offer multilevels of transaction coordination to take the low value work off your schedule so you have time to WOW your clients.

REALTORS, The Disruptors are at the Gates!

 The Disruptors are at the gates, the industry is seeing more clamoring to get into the middle of the transaction than we have seen in many decades. We are watching Wall Street dump billions into the home selling sector. They are not doing that without the belief that they can take the lion's share of the commissions currently going to Brokerages and Agents.

When I mention disruptors to most agents, most seem to think that the "new cool kids" broker model is what I am speaking of, I am not. While those types of "disruptors" might be disruptive to brokerages for a period of time, but that has been going on for the entire time I have been in the industry and longer I am sure. These remind me of a big Ferris wheel, who's cool this year is old next. Every hot cycle also spawns a lot of new low fee brokerages to attract agents, they are popular while it's hot and disappear when it's not. Those are not the disruptors I am speaking of.

 The disruptors I mean is the game changer big data companies, and even more so this potential lawsuit against NAR and the industry practises. Anyone who thinks this is nothing isn't paying attention to who is involved, and the argument they are making. I see no way that we won't have a big change coming in the next 3-5 years when it concludes.

 We have allowed them space in the market, just as we did Zillow, by not focusing on client experience and believing that our value was simply our control of information and data. As an industry most gravitated to a transactional model and away from a consumer focused one. This allowed our services to become commoditized making it vulnerable to these outside threats.

 I am doing a deep dive study in my family's ancestry and since I'm a history and economics nerd I'm seeing some real lessons we should pay attention to today. As I look back across the centuries in my family almost all were farmers. Each generation the oldest living son would take over the farm. This went on from the 1600's until my siblings and I were the very first generation that no one stayed on the farm. This was in the late 70's to 1980. My dad and I tried to keep it going but to create enough cash flow to support two families we had to increase revenue per acre. We tried to put in a confinement hog operation to do that but were shot down on zoning. When you look to economic history you would see that in 1930 there were 30 million American farmers producing just enough to feed 100 million Americans. By 1980 there were only 3 million farmers producing enough for 300 million Americans as well as those all over the world. In 50 years technology eliminated 90% of American farmers. But this was fifty years so it wasn't as noticeable until about 1985 when Willy Nelson was having Farm Aid to try to save family farms.

 I believe we are at the tipping point right now in the real estate industry and will see a similar sea change take place.

  I had my "Scarlett O"Hara" moment, that "As God as my witness, I'll never be hungry again," was in 1999. It was the early days of the Internet, when we still called it the World Wide Web, the public was only introduced to it around 1996. I was running two businesses, one was selling new homes for a builder, the other was a marketing and distribution company. At our meeting on Tuesday morning the builder said that all of our contracts were going to be going online and paper would be no more. This was terrifying to me, because I had never touched a computer, anything with a keyboard intimidated me. I recall thinking that I would just put all my effort into my distribution company. However, that Saturday at a convention we were told it was going 100% online. I have never felt so terrified. I saw myself living in a cardboard box, wondering if there was even a place for me in this new world.  I made the decision to learn, immersing myself in not only the Internet, but online marketing, reading, going to every seminar where the stars at the time were speaking. Michael Dell at the Detroit Economics Club really helped me see more clearly. Ever since, I am committed to never get left behind, to jump in front of whatever I see on the horizon to see if it is something that will be the disruptor or not.

 My beliefs are that there will be two models that survive and thrive and those will he large super efficient systematized teams that will be transactional. They will be the Walmart lower cost per transaction to make everything happen quickly and smooth but the client will be responsible for more leg work. This will be lower commission but high volume. The other will be the Nordstrom model as professional concierge level service for those who value their time and experience more than trying to do it as cheaply as possible. This will be a higher commission rate for higher service levels. All those in the middle become Sears with similar futures.

All of this will require running as a true business model not the traditional self employed model where agents get lost doing all the transaction activities "pushing paper" and not focused on the ONLY two things they should be doing, giving their clients a wow Experience that they will refer and pay more for, and communicating with database and doing business development. Anyone who doesn't figure out how to systematize all their back end processes are going to be the farmers heading into town.

Where's Your Cheese?

  We are watching Wall Street dump billions into the home selling sector. They are not doing that without the belief that they can take the lion's share of the commissions currently going to Brokerages and Agents. We have allowed them space in the market, just as we did Zillow by not focusing on client experience and believing that our value was simply our control of information and data. As an industry most gravitated to a transactional model and away from a consumer focused one. This allowed our services to become commoditized making it vulnerable to these outside threats.

  I am doing a deep dive study in my family's ancestry and since I'm a history and economics nerd I'm seeing some real lessons we should pay attention to today. As I look back across the centuries in my family almost all were farmers. Each generation the oldest living son would take over the farm. This went on from the 1600's until my siblings and I were the very first generation that no one stayed on the farm. This was in the late 70's to 1980. My dad and I tried to keep it going but to create enough cash flow to support two families we had to increase 7 revenue per acre. We tried to put in a confinement hog operation to do that but were shot down on zoning. When you look to economic history you would see that in 1930 there were 30 million American farmers producing just enough to feed 100 million Americans. By 1980 there were only 3 million farmers producing enough for 300 million Americans as well as shopping all over the world. In 50 years technology eliminated 90% of American farmers. But this was fifty years so it wasn't as noticeable until about 1985 when Willy Nelson was having Farm Aid to try to save family farms.

  I believe we are at the tipping point right now in the real estate industry and will see a similar sea change take place.  My beliefs are that there will be two models that survive and thrive and those will he large super efficient systematized teams that will be transactional. They will be the Walmart lower cost per transaction to make everything happen quickly and smooth but the client will be responsible for more leg work. This will be lower commission but high volume. The other will be the Nordstrom model as professional concierge level service for those who value their time and experience more than trying to do it as cheaply as possible. This will be a higher commission rate for higher service levels. All those in the middle become Sears with similar futures.

 All of this will require running as a true business model not the traditional self employed model where agents get lost doing all the transaction activities "pushing paper" and not focused on the ONLY two things they should be doing, giving their clients a WOW Experience that they will refer and pay more for, and communicating with database and doing business development. Anyone who doesn't figure out how to systematize all their back end processes are going to be the farmers heading into town.