The more we work to standardize the real estate purchase agreement, the closer we get to eliminating the real estate licensee from the transaction.
Programmed computers are better than humans at compliance-based work. We prove we believe this by suppressing innovation and forcing licensees to check the same boxes and write the same words in the blank spaces, with little regard for their customers’ and clients’ circumstances. To see this in action, attend a real estate training session, or sit in on a forms committee meeting. Talk to REALTORS. Ask them WHY they check this or that box, include this or that contingency, and fill in this blank but not that one. The answer is likely to be a version of “That’s the way we always do…we were taught to do that.” It doesn’t matter if they are relatively new or seasoned licensees; repetition and standardization eliminate the opportunity for customization.
Ask the leaders of the committees assigned to revising the existing real estate forms why they choose to include standardized contingencies where there had not been one before? Is simple and the same better for the consumer? How do we know?
The Price of Simplicity
Without thinking and customizing purchase agreements to the situation, and the parties’ personal preferences, the differentiating factor between offers is the price. And when the price is the only way to differentiate, the consumer will pay higher and higher costs. When the consumer can find something less expensive and more effective than the common real estate licensee, they will turn away from REALTORS and run to the innovative, robotic alternative surely to become available sooner than later.
Think. Customize. Learn. Resist Becoming Trained.
When the real estate industry looks at their business from the perspective of delivering a better product to the consumer, standardization and repetition will be seen for what they are; detrimental to the consumer and the broker. Tech giants see the future of real estate is in robotics and AI. The non-thinking, box-checking licensees, will be out of work. The computers can pick the boxes to check and the words to write in the blanks, and they can do it more accurately than humans. Those who have a future as a real estate licensee will be the people who think, learn, customize, and contribute to the consumer’s better experience.
