Real estate: no topic so dominates Vancouverites? conversations. But people love to hate realtors, who are often seen as undeserving of their income, opaque and resented necessities to the transaction.
Authenticity in business is disarming and powerful, and never more so than when it shines a light on realty – where transparency seems the exception.
Enter Ian Watt Personal Real Estate Corp. Burnaby-born Watt has sold real estate for seven years. Loads of it.
Watt sells luxury condos in Vancouver?s Yaletown, Coal Harbour and downtown urban markets. He works with listings, not buyers. He?s a maverick realtor who has taken real-estate marketing to a new level.
Watt sees realtors as an overpaid, usually undeserving lot that needs shaking up. The business of being Ian Watt is a tightly organized mix of knowledge, experience, transparency, communications and technology. Clients include sports celebrities, overseas investors and industry leaders; half from the tech sector. Since changing his business to 100% online in 2007, Watt has continually applied digital innovation to create websites, video blogs and social media.
Watt?s marketing is regularly reported on by web, print, radio and TV media. In 2008, U.S.-based Inman News Agency ranked his IanWatt.ca website as one of the ?top 10 most influential blog sites globally.?
Besides transparency, Watt?s marketing differs from that of his peers in its integrated use of technology.
?Most realtors don?t create an online touch point to the market. They simply have brochureware. Sellers want information and someone they can relate to, online.?
Predictably, he?s drawn industry fire. But Watt is merciless in his criticism of realtors? standard operating procedures. ?Every realtor tends to looks the same. The BMW, the Prada shoes, the great suit. ... . .The biggest mistake realtors make is showing off money and success, rather than the practices and listings that make them successful.
?People mistrust realtors because they need little education to do it. Our market is so hot, there are nearly 10,000 realtors in Greater Vancouver. Someone with a month?s UBC correspondence course, so-so language skills and a Grade 12 education can make $500,000 a year while handling the greatest asset in people?s lives. That?s a lot of responsibility.?
Watt?s digital marketing has yielded enough market data and efficiencies for him to split his business into two parts. Both offer different levels of service, systems, marketing and pricing.
Watt?s full services unit uses no assistants.
He said his CondoGo.com site is a ?marketing media company focused on real estate,? where Watt charges only for marketing and negotiation. Evaluations are done online by a ?client concierge?; Watt doesn?t touch it until personal negotiation starts.
Watt knows he?s a harbinger of change in real estate marketing – one where technology and changing attitudes in the young and thrifty ?self-serve? generation are radically altering transactions.
Realty marketing and condo transactions are being transformed by the Internet – much like travel, now mostly organized online by travellers – with pricing and service options that reflect that.
Watt?s five-year forecast is compelling: realtors will be consulted like lawyers, hired to ensure that transactions are compliant and oversee them. Sellers will have rich websites to expose their properties to buyer judgment. Realtors will step in only to negotiate and handle transactions, and will consequently be forced to adapt to lower commissions and increased technology demands.
This cheeky, tech-savvy realtor grasps that giving away information makes his practice authentic and honest.
According to Watt, ?transparency and shared information establish huge trust between people. It?s all about making fast nickels versus slow dimes.? ?
