Spellbinding

I like to watch TED Talks and "follow" for Tweets as new ones are posted. Check out this TED Talk . The 18 minutes are well worth your attention. Sarah Kay, just 22, does an amazing job of captivating what is usually a pretty tough audience and perhaps offers some hope concerning the future of humankind. Vibrant, electrifying and entertaining with some solid messages of deep significance.

OK, so even if Sarah is amazingly compelling, what's that got to do with real estate? Just the point I'm going to make! The wonderful world of real estate totally LACKS the elements necessary to produces the kind of performance Sarah gave at TED. Why is that? Politics! Organizational politics! Real estate has been captured by the same flawed political mentality that characterizes most of our society's other institutions.

In my 26 years in real estate, including attending 35+ state association and a few national association business meetings, I've seen many of organized real estate's shakers and movers in action. A few had decent oratorical chops, but used their skills to "move the body", rather than seeking to pursue any personal passions.

I still believe finding RIGHT HOUSES and RIGHT BUYERS is a pretty amazing thing. It does change peoples lives, I've seen it happen. Yet the industry is increasingly dominated by "one size fits all" risk management driven seminars, assorted techie bling promising to produce more income with less work and a diverse assortment of ways to increase the bottom line of the trade organizations themselves. The net effect is to push the business away from the magical landscape of matching people with property, then working the transaction to a smooth close with minimal drama and uncertainty. It's a very personal business, or it used to be. I'm not suggesting that the personal element is totally lacking. There are outstanding agents out there doing business every day, but their true expertise (and magic) shines through despite, not because of, the performance template crafted by the state and national associations.

I trained close to 100 agents back in the day and the most striking lesson I learned was that each had their own way of doing real estate, so each needed different training. Now everyone goes to the same seminars and webinars, conveniently and profitably made available by the state association. Some get training at their offices, but the little subtleties commonplace 20+ years ago are often lacking. Agents that have been in the business for 10 years make gaffs a rookie wouldn't have made 25 years ago. Who suffers? Buyers who don't buy the RIGHT HOUSE and Sellers who don't find the RIGHT BUYER. BUT by golly they sure know how to fill out those forms--forget the fact that they don't understand them.

The psychology of the business is largely ignored. It's as though, if you use the proper forms and carefully follow directions from the cadre of attorneys always out on the seminar circuit--you've captured the essence of real estate. NOT!

Organized real estate is played out on a political stage, complete with lobbying, back room deals, compromises, shifting allegiances and manipulation of facts for just the right spin. Through it all, job number one is to enhance the power and control of the state or national association over every aspect of the buying and selling of real estate in the US. That includes cooperation with the BIG BANKS who were so scorned just a few years ago, but are now recipients of MLS data acquired for free and sold for millions. Will that data be used to benefit the owners of property who had a fiduciary relationship with their broker at the time the data was acquired? No one wants to go there, because the answer is clear.

Oh, there is no job two. Job number one is the only job. Passion, intensity, clarity of purpose? They'd only get in the way in today's brave new world of real estate defined by organizational dynamics, not by the primal need for a home in which to live in dignity and comfort.

In summary, you won't be seeing folks like Sarah out on the real estate seminar circuit!