FOR REAL ESTATE
As face-to-face interaction drives the real estate industry, rarely are properties sold without personal interaction between prospective buyers and selling agents. The continuing expansion of information technology has further empowered buyers to rely less on agent representation of their own. With the ability to easily locate target properties on various online listing services, buyers now regularly contact selling agents directly to make inquiries and schedule property showings. Most real estate agents and brokers may now see between 40%-50% of inquiries coming from unrepresented, unknown, buyers. A listing agent’s primary selling effort consists of physically walking each inquiring party through the listed property. Frequently, agents do this unaccompanied, with zero knowledge of the person they are now alone with on the property. Safe? No. Additionally, agents often have no method of testing the veracity of information provided by an individual, including asset or financial information. Efficient? Hardly.