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Young Minds Need Developing

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An observation of young minds by an old guy.

This morning I read Lola Audu's post Future Talk via Gen Y ~ A Conversation About Real Estate, and was reminded of some other young minds that arrived on the real estate scene in the 1980's.

I remember in 1985 I was working with a C-21 franchise in northern Minnesota in a beautiful lakes area, of which there are many in MN. Two Harvard business grads had a difficult time separately finding vacation homes for their families. So they got some seed money and started a company called Vacation Property Networks (no longer in business). Their premise was that if they could enlist/partner enough companies in northern Minnesota and those companies would send pictures of their listings to a large office in the Mpls/StP area, thousands of people could shop in albums (pre online days) and know what cabin/lake home they wanted before they even left the Twin Cities. They wanted a 25% referral fee for the agent who sat in the Twin Cities office and showed the client some pictures.

These young brilliant minds just hadn't learned yet that you have to go to the property and experience the ambiance before you can possibly decide that it is a good fit for you. In the course of two or three years the central office interviewed 100's of buyers who were then sent out to agents in the field. Once they arrived we had the same process of establishing rapport, educating the buyers about the area, showing them properties and telling them about the variables in the lakes of the area. Some are merely potholes that freeze out in the winter. Some are vast chains with endless possibilities. Often then, even though we might have found the perfect place for them, that had to drive to someplace 100  or so miles away to see another place that looked as good but was cheaper, or a cousin lived near there.

Eventually companies gave up what seemed to be a lucrative connection in favor of doing business the old fashioned way. I was lucky enough to move to Seattle.

I appreciate what young minds can come up with and look forward to them developing their ideas through experienced channels on the road to success. The young and confident often have thoughts that they don't need one thing or another, yet they are still at home needing everything. They also think that someone (the listing agent) is a threat to them but it is unlikely they have every spent a day with one. Who knows where their developing opinions are coming from?

Not every new idea will make it to the big time, but they sometimes lead to better ideas. Now 92% of buyers look at pictures online and agents are still a necessary part of the equation.

Haven't most of us over forty said, at least once, "If only I were 21 again, but knew what I know now."