With the rising demand for a higher minimum wage, people are seeing a rise of the machines—and we don’t mean that terrible Terminator sequel. In many sectors of manufacturing, automation is destroying many middle-class jobs. While it is mainly a problem for the manufacturing industry, it has impacted hospitality and service jobs as well. While automation does seem to be creeping into most aspects of our lives, and hurting many industry workers, it will never be a problem for the busy world of real estate.
Unless we make leaps and bounds in artificial intelligence, you won’t be seeing any robots or other forms of automation buying or selling real estate. Here are three reasons why:
Human Intuition
When a person comes to you to help them buy a home, they will likely have a long list of details they want and need from their ideal home. With modern technology, you could easily find a home that matched their list completely. For example, say the client is looking for a home with three bedrooms, a den, and a kitchen with an island already installed. Software could likely find you a hundred homes in the area that meet these specifications, but it will never know which one is right for your client.
Any worthwhile real estate agent can see past what their clients think they want and can read what they really want.
Reasoning
Thanks to technology, the sheer amount of data available to businesses is staggering. However, all of that data is meaningless without someone who knows what it means and can follow the trends with their buyers and sellers. Technology can create charts and spreadsheets full of useful data, but what do those figures mean to your client? Without someone to translate the data, all of it is essentially useless.
Alternatively, technology is best suited to work in tandem with real estate agents. A modern agent will access an IDX real estate website via CRM to maximize lead generation and customer satisfaction.
Empathy
Buying or selling a home is usually one of the biggest moments of a person’s life. Your clients want someone who has experience handling something so emotionally impactful to their lives. An automated service has never had to stress about finding the right home, struggle through a failing economy or lose sleep about the future of their family. Empathy is the function and emotion that connects us and makes us truly human.
In today’s busy market, most homes have many offers on them, which means that someone has to lose—and it may be your client. As an agent, it’s your job to assure them that you’ll find them the right home and comfort them through a discouraging time.
There are no algorithms to explain the underlying message behind your client’s body language. It may be able to detect changes in mood, but technology can never understand the full story.
