This is amazing!!!

A friend of mine posted this video on his Facebook account this morning. I saw that it was almost 5 minutes long and hesitated to watch it. I can rarely watch anything online for that length of time. Usually after a minute or so, I hit stop because there's no substance to it or it's just plain boring. This time was different. I was engrossed for a full 4 minutes and 56 seconds. Actually, I watched it twice and will most likely watch it yet again.

Although I was fascinated with the message it also made me a little sad because I won't be around long enough to really see all of this technology grow into what we see in Star Wars and Star Trek. Wouldn't it be awesome to send a prospective buyer a virtual tour of a house in the form of a hologram that they can view from within their very own holodeck? Or maybe Scotty can beam them directly into the house. It would save me tons of money on gas!

For now, I find that I must continue to educate myself on how to use the technology that's currently available to me to make my job easier and more successful. Many of my buyers actually go online and find their new home before they actually see it in person. It's a shame more real estate agents don't take the time to create virtual tours of their listings. They're not servicing their sellers and they're making it more difficult on their buyers. I also wonder why someone selling their home would pay the same commission to an agent who only takes one exterior photo of their house as opposed to an agent who takes full advantage of everything technology has to offer -- that includes multiple photos of both the interior and exterior of their property, a video and/or virtual tour, a personal website and even networking through Facebook, Myspace or my blog.

I do all of this and am continually looking for other ways to market my listings and myself. I guess it's really just a matter of combining state-of-the-art technology with good, old-fashioned service.