The real estate computer horsepower wars.
"Get up to speed on these revolutionary products", begs Realtor® Magazine's Buyer's Guide to Tablets, Netbooks and More. It almost breaks my heart to see the National Association of Realtors struggle manfully to demystify and defang technology for its members—gotta keep Realtors relevant to 21st century real estate! But even NAR admits all is not bliss in tablets, netbooks and more, warning that "each product carries distinct benefits and drawbacks".
Which reminds me, one of the (few) fun things about being in my fifties is that I have this vast store of wonderfully relevant experiences to share, and here's one about "distinct benefits and drawbacks" that illustrates today's moral: horsepower (of any kind) costs money and adds weight and/or complexity.
For most of 2010 I was the proud, even swollen-headed, owner of a snarky Mercedes E 55 AMG. Among this particular product's "distinct benefits" were 469 fun-splashed horsepower, an interior that smelled like an old Jag (and that's a good thing), and a transmission that shifted like it meant it. Among this product's "distinct drawbacks" were 8 mpg around town (although I could get 21 mpg on the freeway) and no place to use 469 horsepower. Plus the fact that I was getting to know my service writer far too well. And the incongruity of driving a German engineering masterpiece to look at starter housing. Now I'm the slightly wiser, slightly less proud, slightly less swollen-headed owner of a lighter, less powerful, less expensive E 350 that does everything I need and is more fun doing it.
Less may not always be more, but often it's more than enough.
Which brings me back to technology and agents: whenever I see an article that tries to introduce the two, I think two things. No, I think three things. The first is that any writer tasked with explaining high-tech to an agent audience should try to use words of one syllable or less.
The second thing is that agents can be divided into three technology camps. The first, whom I'll call Luddites, aka "machine breakers", wants technology to do only a few simple things, but do them with 100 percent reliability. Luddites are doomed to continual disappointment. For example, the program I use to access the MLS could probably put a man on the moon, but its irritations start with log-in and expand exponentially from there.
The second camp, whom I'll call Delegators, has an assistant to do all but the most simple computer tasks. This often leads to what I call "assistant dependency", in which the patient's technical skills soon so atrophy that she is unable to turn on her computer without coaching.
The third camp, whom I'll call Bleeding Edgers, demands the latest and most complicated in technology, and the more miraculous the product claim the better. I'm sure that a few Bleeding Edgers actually do like and understand technology; they make up perhaps .000374 percent of this group. The others either never met a sales pitch they couldn't resist, or they're looking for something to juice their business.
Phone not ringing? Buy a better phone!
The third thing is that even Luddites can be suckers for way too much horsepower. This particular Luddite now has a laptop with enough computing power to match wits with Watson, yet thanks to clever engineering still manages to weigh only slightly more than an anvil. This weakness is due partly to the usual agent one-upmanship—my Mercedes is bigger/stronger/faster than yours—and partly to being middle-aged kids in the technology candy store: very few of us can afford a Ferrari, but many of us can afford far more computing horsepower than we can safely handle.
I still haven't described every agent, because a few think it's 1989. You wonder how they sell homes in Silicon Valley, and I'm pretty sure they're not working with first-time buyers—although there could be other reasons for that, including a generation gap as deep as the Grand Canyon—but even in the 21st century buyers and sellers want agents, not programmers, and real estate is still as much or more high touch as high tech.
So here's a bonus moral: even in high-powered 21st century real estate, high-horsepower people skills—listening, communicating, teaching instead of confusing, knowing when to lead and when to follow—are still more important than the hottest netbook.