Luxury Real Estate

By: Michael Marquette of Marquette Turner Luxury Homes

The Structural Shift in the Real Estate Industry

The Luxury Real Estate Conference and Annual Awards held in Vail, Colorado is now behind us. Around 80,000 of the finest brokers in the World were represented from more than 65 countries. Some great information was exchanged and old and new friends spent valuable time discussing the ever-changing face of the Luxury Real Estate World.

Together with Jim Walberg from Caribbean Islands Realty, I presented a “Breakout session” to the conference on the need for agencies and brokers to reduce their cost structure and move toward Virtual Office models. A large number of real estate offices have been forced to close in the last 2-3 years as the economy has struggled and the number of sales has dropped sharply.

The status quo in the real estate industry has been to operate with many “local shop fronts” which are expensive to operate and extremely inefficient. Throughout Australia and the United States real estate franchisors have insisted on “shop fronts” and are still to come to terms with the booming internet age. Change is happening at a pace that has never been seen before and businesses around the globe are rethinking their strategy with inspiration from companies like Google.

Google dominates with around two thirds of the world’s internet search engine market share yet few people have ever visited a Google office. Google has been able to build enormous market share through skillful marketing and without the need for “shop fronts” to attract customers from around the Globe – the days of expensive and inflexible shop fronts are numbered.

I will be discussing the many challenges facing the real estate industry in the coming weeks. Change is essential and we can be sure that those unwilling or unable to change will be left behind. Whether you are a real estate customer or a real estate professional I hope you enjoy exploring the future of real estate in my “Changing Face of Real Estate” series.