Nancy Rusinak, CRB,CRS,ABR,CRP, of Colorado Springs’ Rusinak Real Estate, shares her thoughts on a number of issues facing the real estate industry and discusses how her market is faring.

What skills will the real estate agent of the future require? The real estate manager?

The real estate agent of the future must be a good business manager first and foremost. That has never been a requirement of this profession and many agents (and brokers) survived solely on connections and people skills; those skills are still important and cannot be understated in earning the trust of the consumer, but the consumer’s standards for our industry have ALWAYS been higher than the standards we created for ourselves and our offices. We will be held much more accountable to the consumer, or they will not choose to work with us; we must bring current technological skills to the table or we will not seem credible. We will be expected to anticipate the consumer’s needs, not drag behind and sit back hoping they will find the house they want and then call us. We must play offense, not defense. If we do not, we will be on the endangered species list as someone else will overtake our business by meeting/exceeding the needs of the current consumer (not the past consumer, where we can be found as a group, reminiscing).

As for the real estate manager…This person needs to create a solid business environment and culture in the office. Non-producing agents need to be counseled, trained, held accountable and career-adjusted swiftly. The manager needs to cease being the enabler. Measurable standards need to be set and upheld by all. Is this any different from any other industry? Why are we so slow to embrace it?

What will the physical real estate office of the future look like?

The physical office space of the future will be mostly “virtual,” with very little bricks and mortar; offices will be much smaller than today with shared work stations, conference rooms. Brokers will have fewer staff, outsourcing many functions currently residing in the offices; there will no longer be any need to provide these functions in-house. The challenge for broker/owners is, now, and will remain, the supervision of an agent pool that rarely resides in the physical office space!

What gaps do you see between your current sales agents’ technology capabilities and the typical customers you will be working with this year?

The gaps are significant and growing every single day. The typical broker or agent is 50-65 years old; the average consumer is a generation removed. Brokers and economists have been discussing this fact for 25 years; the difference, however, today, is that the current typical “older” agent (and broker-owner perhaps) cannot pick up the pace fast enough to seem credible to the 30-45 year old consumer. Only the fast-moving, flexible, technologically-savvy change-agents will survive – those willing to learn new systems, and those who treat their real estate business like a business. The agents still relying on their “people skills” only to propel their business will be left in the dust of this light-speed technological real estate revolution.

If you could re-invent your company in any way possible, what would it look like?

We would begin with employee agents only, not the out-dated “independent contractor” model currently in place. The premise would be that these brokers can make more money per hour than under the current model, have more time off than current agents do, have more regular hours they could count on, have a team of specialists to assist them, in the form of transaction managers, marketing specialists, etc., leaving the agents free to do what they do the best, i.e., interface with willing buyers and sellers. In this model, employee agents could handle many more transactions than any current agent can, because others on the team handle the ancillary details.

The profile for the employee agent does not exist typically in the current “independent contractor” brokerages; the pool is external, perhaps younger, needing income, prospects in place, and perhaps benefits. The business in this model is created by the brokerage and retained by the brokerage, affording the broker/owner the control of business created and closed by the employee agents. The model for this is not new; we need only to look within our brokerages at the “teams” that exist there and mimic that model right in our own offices! This new model requires a shift from the “agent-centric” past to the “consumer-centric” present and future, which is where our consumer really lives! We need to show up.

Where is your housing market in terms of “the bottom,” what do you forecast for 2009 and why? How are you preparing for it?

Forecast 2009: Colorado Springs is experiencing growing foreclosures and a flat-to-declining market. Our economy is driven by the presence of five military installations here. With some expected drawdown of deployed troops overseas, the local area is cautiously optimistic that military families will settle here, buying local goods and services in 2009. The influx of military will be substantial this year and through 2013. We are opening a military counseling center with a separate storefront, staffing it with employees and employee agents with military backgrounds to offer assistance to active duty military and their families as they return and integrate into the local community.

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