The Role of Technology in Supporting Communication for Real Estate Agents – Evaluation of the Phenomenon

Abstract

Globalization and the development of modern information technology have contributed to the higher importance of communication technological support and its use between the client and the entrepreneur in the service industry. Such tendencies also apply to real estate companies, in particular to real estate agents and brokers. The purpose of this article is to identify the level of service adaptation of the real estate brokerage industry to the general tendencies characterizing the service sector. Two research questions were proposed in the article. The first one is about adjustment of the communication tools used by the real estate brokerage industry to the trends in the services market. The second one includes the assessment of the tools’ efficiency in the opinion of the estate brokers and agents. The literature and critical analysis as well as an introductory survey of real estate agents and brokers were all used in this paper. The introductory survey was conducted with the use of webform among real estate agents affiliated to Powszechne Towarzystwo Ekspertów i Doradców Rynku Nieruchomości, between the 2nd of October and 15th of November 2017. After a basic analysis, we can conclude that the real estate sector is quite similar to other services’ sectors as far as the new means of communication usage in contacts with clients are concerned. The empirical studies results show that tools such as smartphone and laptop in combination with social media play an important role in today’s communication trends. The role of traditional means of communication, on the other hand, such as leaflets and newspapers has significantly decreased.

Keywords

• communication
• technology
• services
• real estate market
• real estate agents
• brokers