Yesterday's business: 7 main problems of modern realtors :: Opinions :: RBC Real Estate

Recently, many statements have been made that real estate agencies and real estate business are under threat. Many are convinced that its withering away is inevitable. I don’t think that this area is waiting for an ambulance, but I agree that the existing system of functioning of real estate agencies is not viable in the long term.

At the time of the formation of the real estate market, that is, in the nineties of the last century, people underestimated the importance of this segment of the economy. Real estate services 20-30 years ago were not of great value, and most real estate agencies were craft organizations. Over the past time, the real estate business began to develop actively, and the managers of many companies realized that with the right strategies it can be made large and systemic.

There are few markets in the Russian Federation that are developing as fast as real estate services. Largely because of this, all and sundry have coveted a tidbit of intermediary services in the sale of real estate. The stakes have gone up: being a good real estate agency is not enough in 2017. To be successful, you need to become at least a strong aggregator.

Along with the prospects of the real estate business, it is obvious how promising and capital-intensive the banking services market and the developers' market are. The way to these markets is through control or good interaction with the real estate business. A large number of market participants, banks and large developers began to actively penetrate this field and use various tools to strengthen their presence. It can be stated: real estate agencies are not ready for such a level of competition. Today the real estate business is seriously losing out in technology. Here are seven examples of this technological gap.

First: real estate business does not work well with CRM systems. This means that agencies do not meet the promised deadlines for dealing with clients, and agents do not have good methodologies, standards and regulations of behavior. The level of elaboration of business processes and project work within many companies is at the initial level.

These comments do not apply to companies that are keeping up with the times. This does not depend on the number of employees: I have met many small companies that can give odds to solid systems. At the same time, the real estate business is starting to grow larger. We see this trend according to the official data of Sberbank and VTB: large companies occupy an increasing share of the market, while small agencies are losing ground and eventually being closed.

According to our data, there are about 130 thousand realtors in Russia and another 50 thousand people who in one way or another consider themselves to be them. It is very likely that there will be fewer such people in the near future. Those who stay in this area will have to increase their productivity. My forecast: in two years there will be less than 100 thousand real estate agents in the country, and in five years - less than 70 thousand realtors.

Second: automation is poorly carried out. In large companies, in contact centers, calls to customers are often carried out by robots, and information is processed using voice analysis. In such structures, various kinds of automatic communications with clients are developed. Communication is carried out through a personal account, where everything is transparent, and online you can do almost the same thing as offline. Not all real estate agencies have such a service.

Third: most real estate companies do not have the ability to integrate with large systems. The time has come to communicate with banks, government agencies, large developers, related systems automatically - through data transfer protocols. According to one of the major banks, less than 5% of real estate agencies in Russia were ready to exchange data packets with banks automatically, even if this bank is ready to bear all the costs. The agencies simply do not have the necessary infrastructure - and this is a serious negative indicator. 95% of real estate agencies in Russia are fundamentally unprepared for technological breakthroughs - even at someone else's expense.

Fourth: Real estate agencies are unable to attract and retain the best talent. Such specialists are obtained by those who increase investments in business development - and real estate agencies lose employees who choose another place of work. This is due to the unstable income of realtors and opaque prospects in this area.

If we compare the training portals of large business systems and real estate agencies, we will see a serious technological lag in the latter. Nowadays, intelligent systems are engaged in the analysis of resumes: taking into account the competence model of a particular profession, they build a probabilistic series, rank suitable candidates and send them messages by mail. The overwhelming majority of real estate agencies do not have basic systems for recording calls to candidates and a system for analyzing metrics of the effectiveness of contacts with potential candidates.

Fifth: Most companies do not have modern mobile versions of their sites. Pay attention to the graph of the use of mobile devices. The share of users who visit the site from smartphones will only grow. Already next year, the share of mobile traffic in real estate will cross the 40% mark, and most companies in this area still do not analyze it. You can literally count on one hand to count effective sites with modern mobile versions that you can be proud of. If we look at global trends, then it’s just right to concentrate all efforts on developing websites exclusively for mobile devices.

Sixth: in the real estate business there is no single pricing system. Only a few companies openly position the cost of services, ideally it should be clearly defined and known in advance to customers. Instead, consumers negotiate settlement on a case-by-case basis. For some, the service of a realtor will cost 30 thousand rubles, and for someone 42 thousand rubles.

The lack of a unified transparent pricing system is an indicator of weakness and an actual lack of understanding of the value of the service. Strong systems are very clear about what they charge money for and how much each service costs. If we take the real estate business, then here, as the agent bargained, and earned. It looks more like a bazaar than a civilized market.

AND seventh factor: an openly weak public association. The Russian Guild of Realtors (RGR) has not achieved any significant results recently. The governance structure is not sustainable, and the fees for guild members are very small - perhaps because of this, the guild does not have enough funds for really important steps. Nowadays, no one views the real estate community when developing related laws. I believe that this is an indicator of a crisis in the industry, a systemic and serious crisis.

What's next? The market has already been attacked from all sides. Here are six major forces that will make the real estate business a battleground. The first is banks. The second is online ad aggregators. The third is various investment funds that are invested in the development of all kinds of services for sellers, buyers and tenants of real estate. Fourth - developers who are beginning to actively enter the intermediary market using their own financial resources. Fifth - apartment buildings.

A special place will be occupied by the state, which has already entered the Moscow real estate market through the renovation program. So far, this is only one region of Russia, but others may follow. In parallel, the state will simplify as much as possible all the difficulties in real estate transactions - and this is completely logical. In the not too distant future, the process of buying and selling will take place with one movement of a button, and with development it will become even easier. All these factors will put pressure on the market and reduce the share of agencies of the current format.

The competitors of real estate agencies - banks, aggregator sites and the state - have already come a long way in their services. They reduce the cost to almost zero. This is a serious step that cannot be ignored. Most real estate agencies are now operating and investing in resources that will not be needed in three to five years. The winners will be those who recognize the new reality of the market in five years and reallocate their development budgets to new directions.

Finally, the main question for many: why do we need realtors at all? Many say that the very institution of real estate agencies has outlived its usefulness. I disagree with that. Realtors will be needed, but their functionality will change. The role of labor will decrease, the role of IT systems will increase, which will create a complex interweaving.

I understand that over time, banks, developers, insurers, appraisals, and renovation firms will move away from large offices and redundant employees. Some of the selling functions will be concentrated somewhere. In my opinion, the real estate business has a great chance to become this single center, subject to the required degree of IT training.

I am also convinced that there will be competition for a strong brand between the companies of the above-mentioned profile. Perhaps, in the next three to five years, success will be determined by investments in marketing and the correct positioning of the company's competencies.

We are seeing very good market dynamics in the second quarter of 2017. The situation with the housing affordability index in Russia has improved, as a result - a large number of transactions and an increase in market volumes. If even with the current mortgage rates we see such dynamics, then what happens when the rates are 6-7%? I am confident that the real estate market will grow.

Yes, prices are falling, and on average in Russia, new buildings are almost equal in price to secondary housing. This was not the case before. But falling prices are arguably the best thing that could happen to the real estate market. Look at the auto industry and other segments that have not been able to fall in value: these markets are going through difficult times right now.

In my opinion, the real estate business, instead of actively competing for a place in the sun, took a defensive position. First, attempts are being made to license the activity in order to protect it from potential digital competitors and complicate the entry of companies of any type, while hoping for the introduction of standards that will certainly bring some consistency and orderliness to the market, but at the same time prevent it from developing rapidly. pace - and you can easily miss the technological revolution in the industry.

A striking example is the activities of some regional branches, which brought to the market the concept of a client's attachment to a specific real estate agency. Thanks to this measure, no other members of the association had the right to directly sell the apartment of this client. The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) recognized such actions illegal and pointed to the restriction of competition from such measures. And this is just one example.

Meanwhile, businesses across all industries are actively working with chatbots, big data, automatic speech recognition, augmented reality technologies, automatic document recognition, distance learning programs, and skillful use of geo-targeting. It is high time for real estate agencies to get involved in this technological race.