AS MANAGING DIRECTOR OF the extremely successful Coronis Realty in Queensland, and with almost 30 years’ experience in the industry, you might think Andrew Coronis knew enough about the industry; but even he admits there is so much to learn and some very exciting times ahead for the property market. Here are some of the things he learned about the future of real estate in Silicon Valley. Story by Tara Tyrell.
IN SEPTEMBER THIS year, Andrew toured San Francisco’s famous Silicon Valley with several other industry participants. The region is home to some of the world’s largest high-tech corporations, along with thousands of startup technology companies. Andrew and the team of 15 other agents met with local successes and toured the headquarters of Google and Airbnb.
THE FUTURIST: ADVERTISING AND PRIVACY
The first part of the tour was to have a futurist visit the team to talk to them about strategy, privacy and technology. One of the key issues the futurist discussed was the importance of the customer.
“The consistent thing about Silicon Valley is that if you can make life easier for the customer, or the ‘user’, the business will take off. It sounds simple… and when I relay it back to real estate, we have to start thinking of how we’re going to make it a less frustrating experience for the customer,” Andrew says.
The other thing is that there is no more privacy. “Whatever you’re going to be doing in life, whether good or bad, will be marked online and will be there for everyone to see. Today there is no more privacy, particularly with the increasing use of technology. You already see this on Facebook and Google, where when you change your status or put in a search the site tracks what you’re looking at and ads start to appear based on those.” And that is just the tip of the iceberg.
“It’s quite primitive at the moment. These days we can search on our phone, Google or other search engines and all of it is being recorded. Then this information is played back to us in advertising. But it’s going to get more intense over time. You’ll be walking past shops and restaurants, and all of a sudden your phone will start beeping that you’ve been there. If you search how to make a particular chicken dinner, walk past a restaurant that sells that dish and your phone beeps. That’s the way life is going.”
And in relation to real estate, this becomes even more integrated, to the benefit of agents themselves. Being able to track potential clients, the types of properties they are looking at and where they’re looking, could essentially see real estate agents making far more deals by offering the right property to the right person.
Andrew says, “There are things coming out of Silicon Valley where it’s already happening with big data. There are businesses in the States already doing it, where they’re buying the database from a big bank, the IRS, the Postal Services, and they’re overlaying it, running algorithms over it to get tracking of who is more likely to sell the house. That’s already starting now and will become more and more prevalent.
“At the moment privacy laws are there because people get annoyed because they’re being hassled. If it’s subtle people don’t realise it’s happening.”
AIRBNB: FUN IS THE KEY TO SUCCESS
Visiting Airbnb was next on the agenda and was an experience Andrew says “blew his mind apart”. Airbnb is an online marketplace where people can list and book accommodation around the world, with unique experiences in more than 34,000 cities. As you can imagine, the headquarters was busy, but Andrew says it was surprisingly relaxed, something which many businesses today are realising they need to become in order to find and retain quality staff.
“At Airbnb you’ve got 25-year-olds walking around, some with their dogs or with headphones on, and it’s incredibly calm. It’s not a noisy place at all. There’s a wonderful working environment of all different breakout spaces, as you can imagine. The big thing, for me, is they’re young people running a business. All they’re doing is innovating. Their job is to make the consumer experience better for their product. They’ve a restaurant where they’ve got a Michelin star chef serving food to them, day or night. It was a fun place to be.”
Exciting as it might seem, Andrew says there is no way local businesses could afford to run their operations in the same way, but creating an environment where people enjoy working, or providing an office away from the office – remote working – is the key.
“What I took from this experience is that having a fun environment is something we can be in charge of. A fun environment doesn’t mean you have to spend a whole lot of money. It can be doing very basic things, because people are good with basic things,” he explains. Also, working on a computer means you don’t need to sit in an office; having the flexibility to move around, work in your own time and still get the job done is often the key to happiness and success.
“Having that option to work when it fits around your life creates the ultimate work-life balance. It’s our responsibility as leaders and producers to create a fun environment with our energy, our passion and our enthusiasm, so people want to come and work with you.”
GOOGLE: IF IT’S FAILING, DROP IT
Hitting the campus of Google, workplace of 17,000 people, what surprised Andrew the most was the age group. “If you’ve ever seen the movie The Intern that’s pretty much what it was like.” He said the average age was probably around 35 years, though many of the older ones have been around since the 1990s. The campus had a different feeling to it, an older culture, incredibly progressive and open about making mistakes.
“They have a thing called ‘failing fast’. If it’s failing, drop it and move on. Don’t try to fix it. That’s probably what I took from Google the most.”
Andrew says virtual reality is big with Google at the moment and the future of this avenue is incredible. “There’s no doubt virtual reality is going to be a big thing for house hunting going forward. I don’t believe it’s going to change the fact I want to walk through the house, touch it and feel it. I think most people would still want to do that, because it’s a very emotional thing; it’s a journey.
“What it might do, though, is get you more engaged and more in love with the house through virtual reality. You’ve been for a look, seen it and you love it. Then you go home, lie on the couch and go online again. You get into the virtual reality, start placing furniture around the house and start bonding with it more.”
We also asked Andrew whether, from his experience at Google, he thinks they will play more of a role in listing portals, but he was adamant they weren’t interested. “They have no intention of doing that. They were very frank about it. They’re more interested in the technological side of it; I got an impression they see themselves as the intermediary to help with the technology, to help businesses around the world. They don’t want to get involved in businesses at all. They want to offer solutions to people.”
ADVICE FOR AGENTS: FUN AND EDUCATION
So what were the big takeaways from the trip for Andrew?
‘Fun’ was the key. “Every day you’ve got to make your work fun. Fun is what we all like as humans; universally we like hanging around fun places. We’ve got to somehow make it enjoyable whilst still making it profitable. If we can make work fun and engaging for people, they’re more likely to work really, really hard. If it’s not fun, they turn off and go away. Fun will attract people to your business.”
He says another thing real estate needs as an industry is to work a lot harder on customer service and educating clients. It’s not just about the people selling the houses, but about buyers as well and offering the same level of customer service to both. “In our business alone we get 4,000 inquiries a week across tenants and buyers. When you get customer service right on both standards, people want to use you and your business will fly.
“The customer’s not the person who sells their house, specifically; it’s the person who’s buying a house as well. They’re all part of the transaction. As an industry we’ve got to get better at helping people through the process. If we can show a tenant when they’re moving out of home how to rent a house, how to get a bond, how to get a loan, save for a deposit, do all these things and then help them to buy a house, I think that is what people will be looking for moving forward rather than being left out in the wilderness.”
And getting advice from the right people could make all the difference. “The value of real estate comes from getting involved in the process and guiding customers. Go and source the right people; and I implore agents to take a couple of days a month to go and find new things to learn.”
