Blaming millennials for the wholesale overhaul of various industries was a trend in the early 2010s. You can still dredge up countless think pieces on how millennials destroyed the taxi industry (mostly true), the financial industry (probably untrue) and even specific consumer institutions like casinos, cruises and the diamond trade.
Then, things went quiet. The young generation grew up, maturing into their 30s and 40s as a hegemonic generation with spending power. And all those think pieces, which once sounded alarmist, slowly started to look prophetic. Maybe millennials are disrupting industries once firmly entrenched in an old way of operating – but is that a bad thing?
It certainly isn’t for the real estate industry. In this article, let’s look at how millennial preferences and attitudes are molding the real estate industry in positive ways.
Digital Natives Storm the Real Estate Scene
According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), millennials recently became the country’s largest buyers of real estate, overtaking previous generations. This is significant because millennials are the first generation of “digital natives,” people who grew up alongside the internet and online tools.
Naturally, millennials carry that fluency into all their transactions – real estate included. This phenomenon helps explain the spate of online listings websites that emerged in the past decade. According to another report from NAR, the majority of modern homebuyers now start their search online.
The On-Demand Economy
Other than technological proficiency, what defines the millennial consumer? Ask several experts, and they will tell you that it’s speed and transparency.
Let’s start with speed. The past decades have witnessed the rise of the “on-demand economy,” thanks in large part to e-commerce. The on-demand economy centers on consumers acquiring goods and services quickly, often with a few taps in a mobile app. Recently, industry spectators have seen this trend seep into real estate transactions. E-signing, digital contracts, and instant messenger platforms where consumers can quickly chat with their agents are each an example of the on-demand economy’s influence on real estate.
The result? The industry is shedding some of its red tape and sluggish communication policies, which benefits consumers.
Transparency, Accountability and Consumer Empowerment
Millennials also want transparency, especially from their real estate agents. Older generations did too, but they had little recourse to ask for it. In past decades, you had to settle for a real estate agent that might not be right for your needs – not to mention an agent with opaque commission fees and gate kept listings.
Millennials wanted better, which left space for Nobul to disrupt the real estate industry. Nobul is a real estate digital marketplace that matches consumers with their ideal real estate agents. Once consumers know their options, real estate agents can compete for their business with lower commission fees and more attractive terms.
We’ll let Nobul’s founder and CEO, Regan McGee, have the last word. In an interview with BNN Bloomberg, the tech innovator described that, with his platform “You have full transparency.”
“This is what people are demanding these days, especially Millennials,” he explained. “They want information, they want transparency, they want it tech-enabled.”
As millennials continue to exert influence on the industry, it’s the consumers benefiting. Thanks to a young generation inured to speed, technology and convenience, buying and selling real estate have never been more consumer-centric.
