Amazon has been in the news once again…in case you missed it Amazon is purchasing Whole Foods for $13.7 Billion (USD). Amazon is growing the speed of online retailing in an exponential fashion. With advent of Amazon Prime (to which I am a massive user!!) you can now get your goods in a day or two. It started with books, now it’s household staple items. One click purchasing is completely abolishing how we shop both online and in person.
There is a funny tweet blaming Alexa for the Amazon & Whole Foods deal that was announced:
This is a perfectly funny, yet quite possibly an accurate future when it comes to buying a home.
For those of you who don’t now “Bezos” is Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com Inc.. (as a side not if you would like to read an excellent biography then consider this book: The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon. It’s a fantastic story with great insights into where our tech future will take us.)
“Alexa” is Amazon’s “Siri”…for those familiar with either Amazon’s or Apple’s platform you will know just how inaccurate they can be…so there is the “ha” 😉
I was at the Inman Connect conference in New York City early this year. It was yet another year when speakers talked of the future of real estate sales. A topic that came up a few times was an example of how buyers will drive by a house, click on the app then view the house in 3D. Now that may not be the toughest thing to imagine. What is a little tougher for me to believe will happen in resale real estate is what the tech speakers believe: that the buyer will buy on the app without having stepped into the home on their own or with a professional realtor.
The gap between tech and human interaction is still a chasm, in my opinion. Shaking someone’s hand, looking them in the eye, hearing their voice and intonations tell a lot about whether you can trust someone. However, copy, pictures and general assurances on a website doesn’t match that level of trust. Think about it, how many times have a handful of pictures of a home grabbed your attention? The space looks so bright, spacious and inviting…then you go to the home and have a look for yourself and you wonder if you entered the wrong home, it’s dark, smells like cat pee and the walls are stained with cigarette smoke.
Buying a house online, sight unseen would be a lot like the above tweet. Imagine, spending $1.5 million of your hard earned and your hard-earned-bank-borrowed-money on a house you hadn’t been in? Hadn’t felt or smelt? Imagine one-click purchasing a resale home just like how you can use Amazon Prime, or Alexa was your “realtor”…
I certainly wouldn’t trust Alexa or Siri to buy me a home.
The word is that home buying like this is just around the corner…
