The notion that technology in real estate is a passing fad, something that easily can be ignored as a potential for building a business, has rated in my mind somewhere between fantasy and lunacy. Otherwise sane individuals who personally use the Internet to pay bills, to shop for holiday presents, to balance their checkbook and the like still manage to say with conviction that technology serves next to no purpose in selling real estate.

Sellsius wrote about the phenomenon of buyers using the old-fashioned real estate newspaper classifieds to search for homes. The comfort of print, of the black ink staining your fingertips, seems to carry considerable weight in many people's minds. Some sellers still demand print ads, with the four lines of abbreviations virtually devoid of any creativity in lieu of the much richer, much more detailed marketing available through the Internet.

Century 21 has adopted a policy, effective the first of the year, that any listing not containing at least three photographs will not be included on Century21.com. Why? Because statistics have shown buyers viewing properties on line, when confronted with dozens of similar homes within a city, narrow their search by arbitrary factors such as the number of photographs available and/or the presence of a virtual tour. Put another way, why would an Internet buyer with an Internet attention span (roughly 1.2 milliseconds) waste their time looking at a home with one or zero photos when there are dozens of others to view?

Amazingly, this policy has been met by grumbling from agents with my company and presumably with agents throughout the rest of the state and the country. And I have to ask ... why? Why is it so impractical to provide a bare minimum of photographs to help market a property that you have listed? Three photos cover the basics that 99% of buyers want to see - front yard, back yard and kitchen. Other photographs are great, but the vast majorities of buyers I've worked with want to see the kitchen and the two years. No debate needed.

Our company's technology guru wrote in part, "rest assured people are definitely on the Internet looking for properties that meet their specific criteria" and that "every web site counts, every bit of exposure helps."

Why this is a debate in 2006 is absolutely beyond me. Why sellers continue to hire agents who don't understand the importance of technology in real estate sales also is beyond me.

This week I discussed real estate blogging in my office's weekly sales meeting. One or two agents asked questions. The rest stared blankly at the projected images as if they were 3-D art, unaware of the potential ... or the need.

Technologies currently available allow a single agent to service exponential numbers of clients than otherwise possible. For example, online property listings can be sent, allowing buyers to narrow their choices themselves and save themselves and the agent time wasted on homes without the right curb appeal, the right kitchen.

While many agents alternately cringe from and bash Zillow, I've started running Zestimates on homes I'm about to list so I can see what my client presumably is seeing. Knowing the answer allows me to counter objections in specific terms versus the nebulous "well, only an agent can truly calculate a home's value." Maybe the fine tuning, but a market average is a market average regardless of who's calculating the price.

This isn't to say real estate can exist solely on a technological basis, as the industry remains relationship-based. A human touch is needed somewhere along the lines, especially considering the dollars being spent and the nerves and egos being soothed.

But to deny the possibilities, to say nothing of the necessities, of using technology is enough to make you wonder where they find movies in BetaMax format to fill otherwise client-less days.

(c) Jonathan Dalton, 2006 / Jonathan Dalton's Arizona Homes