...While Realtors Embrace Gens X/Y

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...While Realtors Embrace Gens X/Y

MBA (1/18/2006) McAfee, Jamie NEW YORK-Consumers from multiple generations are driving change within the real estate industry. While some sectors, such as home builders, focus on maturing Baby Boomers, Generations X and Y are increasingly driving technological changes being deployed by realtors and brokers. "The real estate industry is going through more change than it's ever gone through in the past 10 years," said Bruce Zipf, president and CEO of NRT Inc., Parsippany, N.J., here at the Real Estate Connect New York City conference. "Demographics are spurring this market and will continue to spur this market through 2012."   The real estate industry is seeing unprecedented pools of buyers and generations buying real estate, Zipf said. "If you back up 20 years to 30 years ago, there were basically two pools of generations. There were the Veterans [i.e., the "Greatest Generation"] and the beginning of the Baby Boomer generation. Today Boomers remain the prominent population of buyers and sellers, but the other 50 percent is now made up of Gen X and Gen Y-and another pool of buyers that never existed in the mass that they exist today, the emerging immigrant population."   Because of such diversity among buyers and sellers, realtors and brokers face challenges in catering to customer needs. "The convergence of all these generations, who all have different needs, is creating some of the excitement and the innovation. The technology that we are hearing about today is because the new generations are demanding a different way of doing business," Zipf said.   Gen X and Gen Y are very different, Zipf said. "They have different ways of working things. They have different behavior patterns as far as buying and selling. They feel strongly about an interpersonal relationship versus the Veterans and the Baby Boomers."   Character traits of Gen X and Gen Y spur the need for technological change, according to Zipf. Those traits include: . Responsiveness and efficiency is a must. "They are a very impatient group," Zipf said; . Being competent is far more important than "schmoozing;" . A rich Web site experience is critical; . Don't keep them in the dark-"they will drop you like a rock," he said; . Knowledge of technology is key; and . Email is the preferred way to communicate.   "Gen X and Gen Y don't necessarily want to come into the office," Zipf said. "They want to do more things online. That's going to represent an opportunity. There needs to be an office of the future, it's going to have to look different. The behavior patterns are going to shift."