Jason: Hi I’m Jason Clifford here again with my father Jim Clifford and we’re here to talk about some of the changes in real estate over the years and how they help us provide great customer service for our clients.
Jim: One of the biggest differences over the years has been the ability to work with a buyer and show a home. When I first started in real estate, buyers would come to a house or come to an office, I’m sorry, would come to an office. We would talk to them, we would figure out what properties we wanted to take a look at, price range, locations etc.. They would get in the car with us, we would start driving around and looking at different houses.
And the way we would get into the houses, we had a little tiny key and with a little round key. We would stick it in and we would open up the key box, pull out the key and walk into the house.
So what would happen is a buyer would come into our office. we would talk to them we would figure out what homes we wanted to take a look at. We would then drive to the homes and we would knock on the door to see if the owner was home by chance, if they weren’t home. There was a little round key box and it had a little round key that you would use and you push it in and turn and it opened it up and that key was how you would get in.
The problem was, that the owner had no idea if we were coming. We weren’t able to call, we were trying to get a hold of them and a totally different than the way we show now.
Jason: Yeah, today on the evolution of it, I mean even when I started 15 years ago they had generally moved away from that sort of system of key boxes, where you have electronic key boxes now that have the ability to track showings, tells owners who exactly who’s been in their house and when. Allows for us as agents to get feedback on those showings and see how they went what the customers liked or maybe didn’t like about the property so that we can tailor ourselves in our market position of that property to best sell their home.
Jim: Yeah, it’s kind of interesting because, actually the second MLS ever to use a key box was the Tacoma Pierce County Association of Realtors MLS, which is no longer around. But I was the president of the multiple, the year that they created, the using, the electronic boxes. Those boxes that we started with the original ones were very interesting. You had to use a key pad and to open it. And now today, you use your smart phone and you open it. But more importantly, I think is the ability to let owners know that we are coming ahead of time, electronically or calling.
Jason: Absolutely it ties into the systems that we have, the Showing Time system that allows us to communicate, set up showings, find out if there’s a showing, maybe already scheduled on the property and they want to do an exclusive showing so we’re not on top of people showing at the same time as other agents. This allows us to let the customers know who are selling their houses know with showings are scheduled so that they can plan their life they don’t have to be living in this constant data so he’s going to show up and knock on the door at any moment they know and they can schedule around picking up kids up or or living their lives.
Jim: Yeah it was amazing when people would have to put their home on the market years ago. Every day they had to assume that somebody was going to come and look at their house. And so they had to have their house cleaned, top to bottom, everything put away. You know if they had a sick kid, it was like well, you just we’re going to ship you over to the neighbors for a day or whatever in order that a buyer because they have no idea of a buyer would show up. It is so much better for sellers today.
Jason: Yeah absolutely. Well thanks for joining us on this conversation about the evolution of real estate. We’ll be bringing you more information and you can go back and look at our earlier videos.
If you’re thinking about buying or selling we’d love to help you as well, you can find our contact information. Thanks
View the first episode of Changes in the Real Estate Industry with Jim and Jason Clifford.
View the second episode of Changes in the Real Estate Industry with Jim and Jason Clifford. Focused on real estate photography, Virtual Reality Tours and drones.
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