I’m a Granite Counter Top

by Kris Berg

Realtor, Associate Broker

Author website

Or rather, most mornings I greet the day with the eerie feeling that in one nanosecond I just may become one. If you can follow my stream of consciousness, I will explain.

In 1989, Steve and I left our condo at the beach and bought our first “grown-up” house in the ‘burbs. Those were the good old days in San Diego, and our purchase required that we camp out at the new home sales office to assure we would beat the thundering herd to the holy grail of mass-produced, cookie-cutter stucco living. Actually, we had a guy named Bradley camp out for us. (Honestly, I don’t remember his name, but he could have been a Bradley). Bradley (if that is his real name) was apparently younger, dumber, and hungrier than we; he spent 48 hours in Steve’s little backpacking tent on the sidewalk of Frank Daniels Way to hold our place in line. After two days of delivering Breakfast Croissants?, Happy Meals?, and Whopper Combos? to our employee (Bradley was a big eater), we were able to waltz into the sales office on Phase Opening Day (behind the Stevens-Family-from-the-Winnebago) to secure our Dream Home. Of course,
we have since sold it.

Our 1989 Dream Home had stylish bleached oak cabinetry reminiscent of the, well, late eighties and, most importantly, white tiled counter tops. I’m sure granite had been invented, but it was not a builder option. Fast forward to today when a buyer in the builder “design center” is subjected to information overload. The buyer can customize just about everything but the foundation. At some point, and I am not sure precisely when this occurred, certain “upgrades” became viewed by home buyers as a divine right, as critical to the home as, say, the insulation. This is particularly true of granite counter tops. Today, a home with them is not considered enhanced. Conversely, the home without them is considered deficient.

Which brings me to real estate (finally). Last week, Toby Boyce wrote an excellent article (and a Carnival favorite) which identified information overload as one of the big paralysis-causing buyer plagues. I am the victim of information overload every single day, and I submit that it is no different for other agents. Much like a buyer’s success may rely on sifting through the glut of helpful
websites providing essential information, today’s agent’s success may very well depend on their ability to navigate the technology waters, which are rapid and furious.

Years ago as a young agent, I attended a seminar on the latest must-have technology for real estate agents: The personal website. We learned that to succeed in the evolving industry, we would need to have our own on-line presence. At the time, this consisted of securing a domain (www.insert_your_name_here.com) and establishing a relationship with a canned website provider (giving them your checkbook). As time went on, the geek-inclined installed Microsoft FrontPage and built a better mousetrap, or moved to the better website provider (with one being born every minute) and threw them a bigger checkbook. These were just baby steps. Soon we were told to get PDA’s, then wireless internet; our faxes were replaced with All-In-One’s, our email attachments became pdf’s, our digital cameras became permanent residents of our real estate-mobiles, our transaction management went on-line, and on and on. All of this seemingly occurred during the swat of gnat, and yet we were just getting started.

Now, I’ll step back to the way it was. My father-in-law was one of the old school agents. We will call him the Formica of the industry. He entered the business well before the technological explosion occurred. When the MLS system was computerized, he could never truly adapt. He continued to pay someone to enter his listings on-line, and I don’t believe he was ever comfortable without his MLS “book”. Faxing a document was a challenge of Goliath proportions, let alone using a digital camera (which he never did).

Now, we Blog. We do it for a creative outlet, we do it for business, and we do it because we don’t want to miss the tech boat. We do it because of the need to stay competitive. Information technology has made us more empowered, more effective, and more informed; it has streamlined our business and simultaneously made it infinitely more time-consuming and demanding. Our feed readers have become a daily staple, and our Blogs as familiar as our children. Some of us speak “html” better than English. Java script? I’m embarrassed to say that I care. Sure, this new world makes us more informed and more effective in our industry, but I for one get the occasional anxiety attack when away from my computer for more than a couple of hours. Every second, a new search engine, mapping, statistical or to-better-serve-you opportunity is born, and sometimes I feel that a casual trip to Starbucks or conversation with my children will put me at a competitive disadvantage. There are never enough hours in the day. I am certain people in other professions feel the same way from time to time.

As an agent who is quite serious about and married to my profession, I take pride in my innovation and my respect for and application of technology. My livelihood and continued success depend on it. Yet, it is oh-so overwhelming at times. And, as a footnote of sorts, blogging is in its relative infancy in the real estate industry, but gaining tremendous steam. If you don’t have a blog, you should. If you do, be aware that all of your serious competitors will also be joining you within the next year or two. Which brings us back to the overload issue. What will be next? Today, it’s granite counter tops. Tomorrow, or an hour from now, there will be some new innovation. I, for one, don’t want to be yesterday’s newspaper.