`One-stop shopping” is one of those terms that has almost lost its meaning, so ubiquitous is it in the life of the average American consumer.
It’s a subway station loaded with services in the city or a strip center with a convenience store, a clothes cleaner, a video-rental shop and a gas station out in the burbs,
Lately, it’s super-grocery stores, and warehouse operations like Wal-Mart, incorporating all kinds of services, from banks to photo processing outfits, to make it easier for customers to get what they need–and spend their dollars–all in one spot.
It’s no different on the Internet. Consumers are naturally gravitating to areas with well-organized, well-packaged online features and services.
The reason America Online has millions of subscribers, despite troubles with technical glitches and direct-marketing snafus, is that there is a whole lot there under one roof. It’s easy to do keyword searches to find your way to Moms Online or Newsweek Interactive or any number of favorite Net spots.
Yahoo! is the Internet’s most heavily trafficked search engine because it makes it simple for even the most inexperienced user to cruise the Web.
But in the world of online real estate, “one-stop shopping” is still a new, and not yet fully realized, concept.
Everyone knows that it’s the future, but what the One-Stop Real Estate Shop will look like is still anyone’s guess.
Will it, for example, provide property listings from both real estate firms and private individuals? Will buyers and sellers pay agents commissions or set fees? What else will be on the shelf and in what form: home loans, title insurance, home inspectors?
There are technical and regulatory issues involved in shaping the One-Stop Real Estate Shop that need sorting out, to be sure, but many observers would say that how it works ultimately will be determined by what consumers want and how technology can deliver it.
As Ohio broker Darrell Ball says, “As soon as we begin to understand the effects that technology will ultimately have — i.e., not what realty associations or corporate minds want it to be, but rather how and to what extent consumers feel comfortable with it — then we will be able to position ourselves appropriately as Realtors.”
This repositioning is perhaps what is causing the industry as whole to drag its feet on encouraging the research and development necessary to build the one-stop shop. As so many other American industries have had to face during the forced restructuring of the past 20 years, the repositioning of the real estate professional means that the pie will be sliced differently and there will be fewer people to share it.
But trepidation about the future isn’t likely to stop what has already been started. Take the controversial idea of For Sale By Owner listings sharing space on the Internet with agency listings.
This has been a major sticking point for HomeSeekers and CyberHomes as the two online listing services have worked to convince their clients to put their listings on Yahoo! Classifieds, which also carries FSBO advertising.
The industry’s tradition of looking down its nose at FSBOs is about as entrenched an idea as the practice of commission-only sales. In this view, FSBOs are bad because they take money out of the pockets of hardworking real estate professionals. But with the Internet leveling the playing field somewhat between agency and FSBO listings, the industry may have to retrench on this time-honored maxim of the business.
There are now 30,000 listings on the respected Abele Owners Network, nowhere near the big listing services but thousands more than the fledgling San Francisco-based service had a year ago. And why is it growing?
Because it’s an effective way to shop for those real estate customers who would rather buy or sell property direct.
Frank Busutil of Homelife Rolling Ridge Realty sees dealing with FSBOs as kind of a litmus test for the future of the one-stop shop, if not the industry itself. “Our brokerage assists FSBOs sell their own homes without paying us a commission through a series of audio and visual tapes as well as free reports,” Busutil says. “The homeowner who follows all the steps we provide can sell and close on their own homes without an agent.”
Many of Busutil’s competitors think he’s nuts, Busutil says, but he sees it as a calculated decision that takes into account the consumer’s more sophisticated sensibilities. “Our position is much like a good doctor,” he says. “Good doctors focus on making you well, they don’t focus on how much money they’ll make. In time the money will take care of itself with repeat and referral business. If we can help a homeowner save thousands of dollars, avoid the tremendous stress of a foreclosure or upgrade to their dream — and if all this was made possible because they sold their own home and saved a commission — we will have a client for life and not a one-time customer.”
Busutil believes that one-stop shopping will force his profession to change from being merely vendors of proprietary information to a much more interactive resource for consumers to go to for all of the tools they need to buy and sell a home safely and effectively.
“The day of the customer having to go to real estate agents because we hold all the keys and `secret’ data needed to finalize a sale of a home are gone,” Busutil says. “In the past we conducted our business as a provider of information. Today we need to be the interpreter of that information.”
