Selling Homes to Generation Y: St. Augustine, Florida, Ted Tyndall

"Selling Homes to Generation Y: St. Augustine, Florida, Ted Tyndall"

I went to a seminar Friday where they handed out an article by Mathew Ferrara & Company that was great. I will not attempt to reproduce the entire article. It broke down dealing with the different generations in reference to real estate.

The dilemma for real estate companies today: Can their agent successfully build relationships with the next generation of real estate buyers? How are you preparing to deal with the 45 million Generation Y buyers starting to enter the housing curve?

Generation Y is in their 20's.Graduating college, these kids are the new first-time home buyer.No, it's not the Generation X anymore. First, the Y'ers are highly networked. They have grown up online, playing online games with friends thousands of miles away. They make friends by adding them to their Social websites they belong to. They have had a phone since they were 10 and don't make calls on it. They fully expect IM to replace e-mail. They don't check the Internet becaus they are always connected to it.

It gets harder. It's not just about the technology barrier between Boomer Realtors and GEN Y buyers: It's a cultural thing. Boomer Realtors are like barracuda: typically a Type-A personality. Generation Y is the complete opposite. They are the most docile, "can't we all get along" play-nicers in a hundred years. Their teachers were Boomers.

Coming from a super-structured, ultra-safe, uber-nice childhood, Generation Y further complicates the home purchase process because they don't do it "on their own" the same way Boomers and Gen X'ers did. Gen Y is a co-dependent purchaser with the most unlikely of creatures: a Baby Boomer. Gen Y co-purchases everything with either a parent or a trusted friend from the 45-plus age bracket. Open House are about to get a lot stranger: Boomer agents shouldn't make the mistake that another Boomer Buyer has arrived dragging their kids along when it's actually the other way around.

Are their solutions? You bet.First get the right tools - Blackberry, IM account, social networking account - and get beyond grudgingly using them. If you think AIM is still toothpaste, then just pack it in.

Great salespeople change their approach to match the style of their customer.

Pop. What Generation Y real estate buyers are about to teach us - finally and for good - is that real estate must learn that in sales, it's all about the consumer. We are about to get a two-decade lesson on that fact.