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AND THAT PROVES MY POINT, which is this: we have become accustomed to brands rising up and becoming prominent quickly.

What happened, exactly, to change this dynamic?

I think it’s fairly obvious: technology changed the pace of absorbing information, the pace of change..the pace of LIFE ITSELF.

And this has ushered in a new mindset and changed the lens through which we view and analyze almost everything. Today’s “Gen X/Y/Z” (what letter are we on now?) is constantly on the hunt for what’s next, what’s bigger and what’s better.

In 2005, Rupert Murdoch paid $580 million for the hottest site on the web, MySpace.  Sitting in 2005, MySpace was a JUGGERNAUT. It looked HUGE and UNSTOPPABLE.

And then a little thing called Facebook showed up.

OOPS!

And now MySpace is on the verge of being irrelevant. And Murdoch’s investment in MySpace is being ridiculed by most.

Facebook rises up and takes down MySpace. Google bursts onto the scene and obliterates Netscape. And so on, and so on, and so on. Expect the Obsolescence Cycle to spin faster and faster with each passing year.

Here are the takeaways:

• Our culture has transformed fairly radically from “brands are built on longevity” to “brands are built on what makes the most sense TODAY.”

• The pace of change in the world today is positively breathtaking. There are a number of “legacy industries” – and that certainly includes real estate – that have somehow proven to be somewhat resistant to a lot of these changes. I don’t expect this resistance to last forever, because it simply can’t.

• The historically predominant financial model in real estate – based on high overhead/unnecessarily over-sized offices – simply cannot last in the new financial paradigm that has been thrust upon the industry.

• Let me give you a real-life example. In my previous career as a CPA, office and cubicle “hoteling” was happening back in 1990. That’s 20 years ago! It made sense because we were physically working at clients’ offices about 90% of the time. So, logically, three or four people would share an
  
  
  office or a cube. The system wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough, and it saved the big accounting firms HUGE amounts of money.

• Now, lets compare that to the typical major-brand real estate office of 2010, which is large and 90% empty 90% of the time. This is a financial death knell for a broker, and for a franchise that advocates such large spaces.
  

• I fully expect a number of upstart real estate brands – some that may exist right now, and some that haven’t even been conceived as of yet – to rise up and take significant market share from the brands that have dominated real estate for the last 20 or 30 years. MANY people would disagree with me on this point. And most of them probably work at one of those legacy brands that are firmly in the cross-hairs of what’s coming next. And they have a SERIOUS vested interest in maintaining and protecting the status quo. And in convincing YOU that blog posts like this one are exaggerations and distortions of reality.

• Because real estate is in such a massive state of transition and upheaval, I expect a Google or a future rival of Google to take a deep dive and turn the real estate industry upside down. I could write a small novella on this topic, but my guess is that Google could create something that would blow your mind in a fairly short period if they wanted to. And this is pure speculation on my part, but given all the money involved in real estate, and given that real estate and technology mix SO WELL together (statistical analysis, mapping, navigating, etc.), I find it very hard to believe that Google hasn’t already taken this idea a lot further down the road than they’ve publicly admitted. And I, for one, would LOVE to see the Googlefication of all things real estate.

Please take your seats and return your tray to the upright position.

We expect some turbulence ahead…