Most of my morning was spent on getting my new listing posted everywhere on the internet. I then later took a yard sign out and placed it in the front yard, and while there, did another good walk-thru of the home to make sure I didn’t miss any important features. It just so happened there were already two showings on it today, and one of them produced an acceptable offer which the sellers signed this evening. There are going to be a few Realtors who’ve scheduled appointments to show it later this week who are going to be disappointed when I call and inform them it’s already sold.
I’m always personally pleased when any of my listings sell quickly and for fair prices. Having closed on a recent sale today, I’m getting all the more geared up to start beating the bushes for new listings. My office’s inventory, along with all the other Realtors’ listing banks are rapidly dwindling. I’m hoping it’ll get better once our weather straightens out.
Later this afternoon, I took the time to look up a new national real estate company that’s growing quite rapidly in the large metro areas of the United States. I read their entire bio and began wondering if our real estate profession is now being infiltrated all the more by our digital age. It appears that all their buyers and potential tenants have no human contact with their company until they’ve filled out some sort of mobile “app” or desktop questionnaires which after being submitted, are run thru some sort of algorithm to decide which properties would best suit them, and above all, what agents would most likely fit their personality profiles. Once that real estate company’s computer spits out the best suitable properties, and their most “fitting” agents, those buyers or prospective tenants will be personally contacted by their brokerage for the first time.
I do know many of the big stock brokerages do this with their clientele, but is it moving to mainstream real estate sales? Wow! I know too well how chemistries of buyers and agents can go south really fast, along with buyers’ tastes going from one extreme to the other before purchasing. It looks like all the more of our society is being pigeon-holed by our not so benevolent cloud computing. How many of you have read George Orwell’s “1984”? I’m all the more considering that book, and subsequent movie to be more of a revelation of societies to come, rather than one man’s fictional writing.
While visiting with a dear client today about her taking time to slow her body and mind down for about a half hour each day, I couldn’t help but ask, “Are you meditating or enjoying a kopfkino?” She laughed and said, “What’s that?” I proceeded to tell her that it’s a German word that’s now being used in the English language but it’s true meaning being distorted a bit. In English, it means envisioning in your mind something dreadful or ugly that’s either imagined or having happened in the past.
The true German definition is considered more of a vivid day-dreaming which I’m sure you’ve found yourselves or others doing on occasion. Kopf in German translates as “head” or “mind”, and Kino translates as “movie theatre” or “cinema”. So there you have the combination of two words creating another meaning—Kopfkino. What’s playing in your theaters tonight?
