So I'm selling the house I've lived in for the past 22 years, and the experience is much different this time around. One example is how the house is being marketed by our veteran real estate pal, Peggy. "Older clients want to see their home advertised prominently in the newspaper," she told me. Instead, she gently explains to them that only older people respond to newspaper ads, "and those are not the people who will be buying your house." Today's potential buyers find homes using one of multiple apps—Zillow, for instance, or the local multiple listing service online.
There's another difference: The traditional lockbox on a home for sale has changed. The lockbox looks the same from the outside—a clumsy looking device that hangs off the doorknob with the house's key inside. However, the sales agent now uses an app to unlock it.
When I mentioned this in passing to Ram Nagappan in an interview in early December, the Pershing chief information officer's eyes lit up. "Of course! They can monitor who viewed the house, how many times they've come to the house" and how long the agent and prospective buyer stayed.
The agent and the real estate firm also have access to—and provide to the seller—the number of times a prospective buyer (or other agent) has viewed the home's listing on the MLS site, and how many prospects have "favorited" the home online. Beyond assuaging the seller's concerns about how well the house is being perceived, those reports clearly inform the sales agent and real estate's marketing and sales strategies.
The ways home sellers now interact with their realtors correlate with how advisors market and sell their services and how prospective clients find and employ advisors. Successful advisory firms are already using social media and big data to market themselves—and smartly successful advisory firms are using everyone in their firms, especially younger digital-native employees, to tell their firm's story in places other than traditional media channels.
