NYT Profile of "Curbed" Founder

Meet the "Realtor - Social Worker" *

The Sunday New York Times has a lengthy profile of Lockhart Steele (yes, that's his real name), the founder of real estate blog "Curbed."

If you didn't know -- and I was only vaguely aware -- Curbed (and other blogs like it) apparently are now integral to how New Yorkers (at least the ones not in the Bronx) buy and sell real estate. Oh, and the properties they're buying are exclusively over $500k -- frequently, a lot over.

Here's what Steele says blogs -- and technology in general -- are doing to the real estate business:

The broker’s job is no longer to tell people what a house is worth, or what nearby properties have sold for — everybody knows that now. Instead, a broker is more useful calming down a buyer agitated by a proliferation of Web gossip. The broker is less salesman, more therapist, or oracle. And by professional obligation, a daily reader of real estate blogs.

--Mark Oppenheimer, "The Optimist's Blogger"; The New York Times (3/15/2010)

So, is Steele right?

Partly.

He's definitely right that prospective Buyers engage with Realtors much "later" in the process.

It's not uncommon now for my clients, at a first meeting (!), to hand me a lengthy list of properties they want to check out (or have already seen!).

Thanks to the Internet, there is exponentially more information available about real estate.

However, in my experience, that doesn't necessarily make Buyers and Sellers more knowledgeable about how the process works.

As far as the "emotional" side of the business, there's no denying that technology makes an already close relationship even closer.

You don't invite your lawyer or dentist into your home, and share intimate details about your family, finances, and lifestyle; trusted Realtors are privy to all that (and more).

Where I think the article misfires, though, is extrapolating from Manhattan to other markets generally -- markets that don't have Manhattan's demographics, density, or money.

At least in the Midwest, not everybody is a Gen-Y'er who lives and breathes Twitter, Facebook, and blogs (at least not yet). Nor are they in the market for $1 million-plus Soho (or NoHo or NoLita or TriBeCa) lofts.

So, maybe the world Steele describes is coming . . . but it's not here yet.

*When Josh Kaplan, a former social worker and now long-time City Lakes office manager, is asked why he got out of social work, his standard reply is, "what make you think I got out of social work??"

Real Estate & Technology

"The More Things Change . . ."

Taken to their logical conclusion, innovations like Twitter are inevitably leading us, I suppose, to some sort of real-time, Borg-like mind meld (my apologies to Star Trek fans).

And certainly, advancing technology is affecting how real estate is bought and sold (more posts on that in the works).

However, I think it's fair to say that a good percentage of the advances relate to the speed and reach of people's communication.

So, Susan Boyle is a nobody yesterday, and famous today (and back to a nobody tomorrow?). Or, the street riots in Tehran are on display worldwide, notwithstanding the regime's efforts to suppress eyewitness accounts.

In the meantime, real estate itself is surprisingly technology-resistant.

At the end of the (24-7) day, it's still about bricks-and-mortar, or land, or some combination thereof. That's so even if the "bricks-and-mortar" are now high-tech composites, and the central nervous systems of buildings -- homes included -- are increasingly sophisticated.

"The more things change . . ."

I find that both a bit of a relief, and reassuring.

It reminds me of an experience I had in law school, when I argued a real estate case in moot court (simulated courtroom practice for novice attorneys, in front of a panel of attorney-judges).

Although I did well, advancing three rounds, I remember being thrown by one of the judge's questions.

In particular, he wanted to know why I couldn't "cite any legal authority more recent than 1892" to support one of my arguments.

A bit flustered, I said that, actually, that still appeared to be the governing precedent.

Afterwards, the judge came up to me, and told me I should have "stuck to my guns" when he had pressed me.

"A century-old case is recent when it comes to real estate law," he pointed out (correctly).