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Health & Fitness

Trends That will Drive Residential Real Estate Practice in the Next Five Years

What Are the Trends in Real Estate in the Next Five Years? As a Consumer You Drive Most of These Trends.

o A Slow Recovery in Housing Sales and Prices. Overhang in inventory needs to shrink.  Shadow inventory (owners delinquent but not yet in foreclosure) must not come on the market. Unemployment must be reduced. America needs jobs and spending at home. 

o Changing Consumer Demographics. Traditionals (>66 years of age). Boomers (47-65 years). Generation X (35-47 years). Millennials (<34). Ethnic populations moving from rental to home ownership. 

o Continued Advance of New Business Models. Full service, desk fee, partnerships, profit sharing, smaller physical offices with the same number of brokers, limited service firms, virtual firms.   

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o The Use of Integrated Technology Platforms Paperless Real Estate - Electronic Signatures.  Digital storage and management, on-line systems to handle both property data and consumer data with regard to each transaction. In house proprietary systems have not been the way to go. "Cloud" websites are more feasible. They can  be updated rapidly and keep up with quickly involving technology. 

o We See an Evolution in How Consumers will Select Real Estate Professionals. Reputations and networks are more-and-more built and maintained on line. Social media become important. Referrals are happening on Facebook, Twitter. Brokers are now found on real estate portals created by banks and even retail firms where customers are directed to “real estate services.” Angie’s List and Yelp now rate real estate professionals. 

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o The Emergence of Real Estate Teams. We shift from broker-centric to professional centric models. Some professionals get “big” and ramp up income by much effort at lead generation and delegation of specialized tasks to other team members. Keys to this model: specialization and accountability. Some teams now drive as much volume as brokerage firms ranked on the Real Trends 500 report. 

o A Stiffening Regulatory Environment – Ever Year We See More Laws (State and Federal), Additional Rules, New Forms … All  Resulting in More Complex Transactions.  RESPA and Truth in Lending will get more scrutiny as well as appraisals, fair housing and inspections. GSE’s (e.g, Fannie Mae) may no longer be the ready made secondary market, leading to higher priced mortgages and more stringent borrower requirements. Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 – bring increased privacy regulations on how information may be shared, stored and protected.                                                          

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