Finding Homes For Sale Is Easy….. or is it.

A search on Google for “Calgary Homes for Sale” today brought up 40 million web pages in less than a blink of an eye. Any Google search with any variation of Homes for Sale + Calgary will bring up more web pages than anyone would ever have the time to look through. You can get more specific and search for Bungalows in South West Calgary only in Acadia or Haysboro, etc. You will still get tons of web pages to scroll through and many that have nothing to do with what you are looking for.

In comparison, if I do a search in the Calgary Real Estate Boards MLS Database, I find 4,686 homes for sale.

40 million vs 4,686…. Where do you want to search for homes for sale?

In the “Old Days”, you hear Realtors past their prime talk about, how all homes for sale were published in a catalogue that only those Realtors possessed. If you knew a Realtor well, they might lend you the book, although that was against the realtor's rules of engagement. The book was a crutch for many real lousy Realtors. If you wanted to know about properties for sale, you had to talk to a Realtor or drive around looking for signs. Egos were huge amongst Realtors because they had the info you needed and they flaunted that fact.  The internet was like the end of the world for these “Old School” Realtors. Like Warren Buffet loves to say, “When the tide goes out, you will see who has been swimming naked”. Many of the Realtors who built their business and their egos on access to information quickly retired voluntarily or the business retired them.

So the internet solved the problem of lousy realtors holding the information as ransom for you to do business with them. However, the vacuum of information that once existed has now turned into a Niagara Falls of information. Before it was hard to find a tree, now the forest is everywhere and spreading rapidly.

In the Internet Age of Real Estate, every Realtor has a webpage and has it linked to the main MLS Data Base at the Calgary Real Estate Board. Many Realtors will create a single page for a single property. They advertise the same property on every website that is out there. Therefore, a single property can end up on thousands of websites, blogs, facebook pages and posts, twitter posts, tumbler posts, pinetrest posts, etc…

There is no problem finding homes for sale anymore. They are everywhere.

Now however a few new problems arise. #1, is nothing ever gets deleted on the internet. Your own personal pictures and info will be there in cyberspace long after you are gone. Same thing happens with real estate. Search through those 40 million web pages Google found and you will find properties long since sold. #2, is pictures of real estate has gotten so good… that pigs with lipstick are everywhere. Just ask anyone who has rushed out to see that hot new listing because of the awesome pictures. And when they arrive…. the only thing they marvel at are how good the photographer is!

 In the “Old Days” the primary reason you needed a Realtor was to find a home for sale. That is no longer the case. You can find tons of homes for sale yourself. Therefore, the primary role of a Realtor has changed and for the better I think. Realtors today have to help you find the tree in the forest. They have to get you even more information not readily available to help you make your own informed decisions. Realtors should not be salespeople. They should be information providers and transaction facilitators always representing you in your best interests at the expense of their own 100% of the time.

Realtors cannot represent the buyer and the seller at the same time. That is like one lawyer representing a wife and husband at the same time in a divorce. Cannot and should not be done, it defies logic. If you buy a home from the listing real estate company, you just bought as a customer in an electronics store. No one represented you. The same thing happens if you buy directly from a builder. The sales agent at the show home is paid for production by the home builder.

Most bad experiences you hear about regarding real estate started because someone representing a buyer or a seller had a conflict of interest that wasn’t revealed or was downplayed at the time of the transaction.

Realtors Conflict Of Interest will be another blog article coming soon