Technology is offering efficiency, knowledge and timely information. Through the adoption of technology, brokers can be trusted advisors at the table, rather than transactional agents. It’s the role of a broker to provide liquidity, transparency and the highest return on a property.
Residential real estate brokers — think single family homes — quickly adopted technology as a symbiotic partner while commercial real estate has lagged. Today, embracing technology will propel savvy commercial real estate firms ahead and leave those slow to adopt new practices chasing the curve. Technology will most certainly have a significant effect on the business of commercial real estate brokerages.
Like individuals in many other industries, real estate professionals and brokers especially have been reluctant, skeptical and worried about adopting new tools that could seemingly put them out of work. Think about stockbrokers: Their current day-to-day operations are totally different from what they were doing 20 years ago, but their jobs are also now enhanced and more efficient because of technology. And it’s not like they’ve lost their jobs due to technology, quite the contrary. Technology has supplemented their fiduciary role to clients, their relationships and their market knowledge — now, they’re better brokers because they have embraced the role of advisor in its truest sense. These same reasons apply to commercial real estate brokers and why technology will only strengthen their work without endangering their careers.
Relationships
Technology will help brokers spend less time working on transactions and more time providing advice and building stronger relationships with clients. We all know that technology increases the number of eyeballs on a listing; however, converting those site visits to offers and navigating rounds of offers and due diligence requires a relationship and communication between the buyer and the seller. The relationships needed for these roles is a skill that brokers cultivate over time and something that technology can’t replace.
Market Knowledge And Advisory Skills
While technology will make collecting rent comps and financial modeling more efficient and less time-consuming, brokers will always be needed for their industry knowledge and advisory skills. While there are plenty of data providers out there, finding the information you need for a rent survey or offering memorandum takes less time. There are even newer platforms out there that utilize predictive analytics and machine learning not only to give you the data but also take it to the next level of conclusion-making. Algorithms will help brokers analyze more deals in less time by quickly removing outliers. Whether it’s answering what the optimal rent price should be or what apartments are truly comps, brokers will still need to vet auto-populated answers and provide their expertise to clients on what other sources are saying and what they believe is the right answer.
Fiduciary
Brokers play a key role as fiduciaries to their clients. A broker provides third-party mediation and intimate market knowledge. It’s the duty of a broker to get the best price and terms possible for their client. If off-market deals have taught us anything, it’s that the buyer, not the seller, has the advantage. A broker needs to represent the best interest of the seller, while respecting the buyer, bringing both parties to a final offer and then to closing. All the nuance required of a fiduciary role makes it hard to think that technology will ever replace it.
Brokers will have to evolve their businesses to incorporate new tools in the marketplace or they will be left behind. How much of your day do you spend doing tasks not directly related to winning business and closing a deal? From CRM to marketing automation to data accessibility to automated analysis, technology tools are like having a bigger team without having to hire additional support. These tools also give you more time to do what you do best — broker. It’s better to get out in front with adopting new technology than to chase to catch up.
