2013 Florida Realtors Convention as seen by a TV Junkie

I’m a TV junkie. I admit it. I watch TV all the time. Literally. It’s on from the time I get home from work, until I leave for work the next day. Yes, that means it’s on all night. It helps me sleep because my brain hears the show instead of my thoughts. My mind keeps my brain awake. The TV makes my mind quiet. Does that make me crazy? No, my life makes me crazy, this is just a side effect. You’ll see my TV junkie-ness during this blog.

As I mentioned in my previous blog, the Florida Realtors 2013 Convention was all about MLS and trends. Earlier this week, I covered all the MLS updates, so today, let’s talk trends. What’s new or useful in technology?

I use the words new or useful because I noticed pretty quickly that not everything that was talked about was new. Sometimes an app or program has been around for a while, but it works well. Nothing better has come out, so why change? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! If something better comes along, give it a try.

Day one was the Real Estate BAR camp. This was my first one, so I had no idea what to expect. My main goal was to see if there was a way to implement this type of session into MLS training. I’m still mulling this over.

First, as everyone signed in, they wrote on a sticky note what topic they were hoping to learn about. Once most people had signed in, the coordinators gathered all the notes, sorted them out into topics and set up the sessions. Since it’s all done “on the fly”, topic experts weren’t available. Facilitators were used to guide and initiate the conversations.

The goal of the RE Bar camp was to get attendees to discuss it amongst themselves. Anyone remember actor Mike Myers   (Saturday Night Live) and his character Linda Richman? As the hostess of a talk show, if she got emotional about something, she would give a topic for the audience to discuss amongst themselves while she gathered herself together. For example, “Rhode Island: it’s neither a road or an island. Discuss!” I loved that. That’s what the job of the facilitators was. Start the discussion with the attendees sharing their experiences rather than listening to an expert speak on it. Who’s a better expert than your fellow Realtors who use that app/program, or work that issue?

So here’s my top picks from the RE Bar camp sessions that I went to.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) – consumers don’t want website “apps”, they’d rather have mobile centric sites, ones that adjust to the screen size without reducing font size.
Digital Media/Email – interview your customers to see what their tech comfort level is, then use that to best communicate with them.
Online Storage – one word: Carbonite
Time Management – Create a work or task list, then “chunk” it. Group similar tasks together, so that the overall list doesn’t look overwhelming.

There was a lot more discussed, but these were the ones that stuck out the most for me

The General Session on Friday was right up my alley. It featured the Property Brothers, Jonathan and Drew Scott  . They’re on TV!!!! And I watch their show!!! Cool!

If you don’t know them, they have a couple of shows on HGTV about helping people buy a fixer-upper for less, then using the rest of their home-buying budget to improve it. Not flipping, but actually buying and living in the home. Both of  them are licensed real estate agents, but one of the identical twin brothers is also a licensed contractor. So one of them helps the buyer purchase the home, the other one leads the reconstruction.

They were interesting, informative, and entertaining. The interactions between the brothers made me, as the mother of two, want to tell them to get along, but I suspect that it’s mostly show. I hope.

They said two things that particularly reached me. One was that if you have a buyer who is interested in purchasing a fixer-upper, having their contractor with you for the showings can be helpful. The contractor can see and point out things that are easily fixed, and things that are not.

The other good point they made was along a completely different line. They talked about the Continuing Education (CE) that you have to get in order to renew your real estate license. Many agents wait until just before their renewal date to slam in the hours. As Association staff, I can tell you that we see this all the time. Panicking agents with less than a week to get 14 hours of credit!

Jonathan and Drew, my new good friends, suggest that it might be better to get the credits early, and then use the knowledge from the courses to help your business. Makes sense to me!

Another seminar I went to was called Seven Trends That Are Changing Real Estate. Thank goodness the Risk Management committee agenda was a repeat of other committee meetings I had been in, because it was at the same time as the Seven Trends session, which was really interesting. I liked and agreed with each of the seven trends. Florida Realtors News apparently agreed because they did an article on the session. Click the link to read their article which includes each of the seven trends. The one that struck me the most was the one on video (back to TV). Make a video selling yourself or a property, commercial style. Short, sweet and to the point.

As I mentioned before there was a lot more info at these meetings and sessions that I didn’t include in these blogs. All I can hope to do is bring back the high points.

Questions? Comment on this post or email susan@ecaor.com.

Susan Beck, MLS Director
Emerald Coast Association of Realtors
Fort Walton Beach, FL