REXI Agent 2.0 Development Program – Troublemakers Welcome

Greg Swann and Joel Burslem are trouble makers – so is Jay Thompson and Jim Cronin….

… and I say it with the greatest respect for them and their work.  They are all RE bloggers and have a opinions on what is being called ‘Real Estate Agent 2.0‘, the real estate agent of the future or at least what the promise of the future should be – and they are all invested in it.

Now I’ve not met all these guys yet and have only had interactions with a couple of them, but I find their writing powerful and insightful.  I’m introducing them here, because 1) they are becoming a regular resource for me in my own work on the real estate technology, and 2) I like what / how they write… a lot.   

As sat down for this post, I realized how important the transition is going to be for not only agent, but also broker in the Agent 2.0 world and if I were to identify the theme of the blog, that would be it – how REXI is going to approach the Agent 2.0 paradigm and be successful supporting the agent of the future.

Here are some of the foundation posts from my mentors / associates / fellow bloggers that I can draw my comments from -

Last year Greg crafted a great post on ‘Apprehending Realtor 2.0‘ in which he lists the essential skills for the coming generation of real estate professionals -

1. HTML Skills
2. Graphic Design
3. Search Engine Optimization
4. Client / Server Side Programming
5. Web 2.0
6. Videography / Photography
7. Writing

I’m not sure if he expects geeks to become agents or agent should become geeks – lot’s of geeky stuff in that list.  Fortunately with many of the blogging platforms, the geek-factor is minimized by the interface, my comment is that you shuld not be put off by them – writing something interesting is the essential skill here.   

Jim Cronin is a long time proponent of real estate blogging at the RealEstateTomato and usually has interesting posts.  Blogging is something a community can / dos do however.  One of Jim’s compatriots, Teresa Boardman / The St. Paul Real Estate Blog, ( I read her a lot too, but not everyday) made a great point in her December posting at The Real Estate Tomato on digital divide between those who use blogging as a tool to connect with the industry and clients and those who don’t – the salient comment I read from her post was -

“The learning curve looks much steeper to our colleagues that are watching us from far away. They encourage us to get back to the basics because that is all they know,  as if they are certain that doing more of the same and working harder at it is the way to grow our businesses in a shifting market, and a new age.“

…we’re not in Kansas anymore Toto and if ‘going back to the basics’ is what you know, those of us in Web 2.0 and chasing the Agent 2.0 paradigm will bless you and wish you well on the return trip to what you know…

Joel Burslem is now a contributor at Inman Real Estate news and writes excellent copy at The Future of Real Estate Marketing.  The recent posting from Joel was contrary to that of Gregs though on the relevance of the Redfin ‘Real Estate Consumer Bill of Rights’- Greg stirred things up and Joel at least liked the idea of some kind of customer oriented manifesto.  Redfin, of course, want’s things their way and Greg caught them at it – Greg’s mantra is the “Divorced Commission,”… a model in which the buyer pays his agent and the seller pays his agent – separate from one another vs. the seller paying all the commissions from the sales transaction.

Lastly, Jay Thompson is a wizard with stats and in finding relevant stats on the Phoenix market, blogging as ‘The Phoenix Real Estate Guy‘, you expect that I suppose.  I really like the experiment on the ‘Real Estate Minimalist Website‘ and the results are impressive – very Agent 2.0 stuff…

So while the REXI Blog is a new addition to the crowd, we’re aiming at making it relevant and useful as we produce our own version of the Agent 2.0 model.  Come join the fray and let’s make the journey…

The REXI Blogger