Will the FSBO Model Become The New Real Estate Trend in the Year 2020?

 

According to a survey on real estate properties, only 1% of the home sales account to FSBO in Australia. A typical FSBO house goes for around $219,000 as compared to the house sold by a real estate agent which brings in $259,000. The prices sometimes go as high as 7 digits and these are the houses that are hard to sell. In 2014, around 970 properties were sold by the owners.

The question that remains is: Will a real estate agent become obsolete?

Well… there’s no straight answer to it because the data collected over the years does not show a clear picture of the future.

What concerns real estate agents is how can they divert the attention to themselves?

The Culprit

INTERNET!

While most of us are grateful for the benefits internet has given us, real estate agents are threatened by its advancement. Back then, estate brokers were the only ones who had access to listings. There was no way first-time buyers could check computers and make their own offer. All was in order and under control… and then it all changed.

We were then introduced to MLS, and buyers and sellers had everything at the tip of their fingers. Market trends could be easily found out along with making price comparisons, which all led to instant offers. The middle man was slowly dying a penniless death. Their value vaporized and the technology shift took over.

Is There Any Hope?

Probably Not!

Disrupted By Technology

There are hundreds of websites on the internet such as buymyplace.com.au that provide people access to market and sell their house without an agent or at a fixed fee, and an opportunity to save more when buying a house. How do they do that? By cutting the commission.

Real estate agents need to separate themselves from this trend in order to deliver true value to customers. This can only be made possible if they have something more valuable to offer.

If we look at the real estate process, buyers and sellers have conquered a few things such as open houses, negotiations, appraisal, home inspection, mortgage, and loans but two things that they still struggle for are the property liability and the filing of the paperwork.

While this is a window of opportunity for real estate agents to capitalize on, there’s still the looming fear that advancement in technology will make it possible for buyers and sellers to even do this online. The future does look bleak for real estate agents… so much so that they might just lose their value before 2020.

So, yes! We can say that there’s a higher probability that real estate agents will become obsolete till 2020. Even if the process is made efficient on their part, all buyers and sellers want is to avoid the commission. Even though they struggle to sell the house on their set asking price, they prefer to lose here rather than to a real estate agent.

While we can’t predict the future, it can be said that if advancement in technology covers the above mentioned two areas as well, then real estate agents will be considered an outdated trend.