The Internet & Real Estate

There is no argument that the internet has revolutionized the way we search for property, the way we value property and the way we make decisions about property.

Before we had this unlimited and instant online access to information through property portals such as RPData, realestate.com.au and domain.com.au to name a few, this space was vastly different.

A property buyer would spend hours and hours trawling through the local newspapers compiling lists of properties that match their search criteria, often then jumping in their car on a Saturday or Sunday and doing a drive-by to observe the street appeal of the properties on their list, shortlisting the best ones. The ‘old fashioned’ buyer would invest many hours and resources into their search prior to inspecting a single piece of real estate.

I was recently reading a rather interesting article on Ev Williams (founder of Twitter and Blogger) on his theory about how the most successful internet companies have flourished and made immense profit – not by creating something new that nobody has ever seen before, but to simply designing a much more convenient experience for the end user.

“The internet makes human desires more easily attainable. In other words, it offers convenience,” Williams said. “Convenience on the internet is basically achieved by two things: speed, and cognitive ease.” In other words, people don’t want to wait, and they don’t want to think – and the internet should respond to that. “If you study what the really big things on the internet are, you realize they are masters at making things fast and not making people think.”

Looking back, the ‘old fashioned’ buyer who would spend many hours and resources on simply creating a shortlist of suitable properties can now achieve the same – if not a more diligent – outcome in a considerably shorter amount of time with far less effort and thought required.

This is what we now refer to the ‘modern buyer’. And with this new savvy creature of the internet, the way in which we search for, value, and make decisions about property has seemingly changed forever.

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