Hello there, 2021!
A new year, a new set of hopes and dreams.
I suppose if I were being honest, I’d like for one dream to be able to stop prefacing all these columns with a passing reference to COVID-19. It’s a bit of a surreal experience to be trying to eke out a few chuckles while sidestepping something that has affected all of our lives for three-quarters of a year now and counting.
Aside from wishing away that intrusion into life as we know it, I’ll offer up a few real estate specific New Year’s desires. By desires, I mean outlandish scenarios we are unlikely to see come to fruition.
1) As the years pass by, robots intrude more and more into our everyday life. For example, we expect a tiny round rolling vacuum to clean our entire home, so why shouldn’t Realtors be able to have a Roaming Roomba Room Measurer? Why waste all that time with a measuring tape or electronic tape measure when you could just plop down Roscoe and let him roam while you’re taking pictures for your online listing?
2) Well, now that I’ve opened the door, why shouldn’t you be able to program Roscoe The Roaming Roomba Room Measurer to also have a pop-up pedestal camera that takes high quality pics whilst he toodles around the home? What a time saver! It will provide 360-degree video, automatic recording of the room size and with just a few more programming tweaks, observational descriptions stored to then download straight into your digital and print marketing features.
3) Most of you have taken courses or been coached on objection handling, but wouldn’t 2021 be even better if you could run a series of generic responses for Roscoe after he’s done with the rest of his chores, and is recharging beside the kitchen table while you are filling out your feature sheet with the sellers? “Well Mr. and Mrs. Jones, while we do want to get as much as we can for your home, those railroad tracks outside do seem to indicate a smaller pool of potential purchasers…” Make Roscoe your bearer of bad news!
4) As long as we’ve been offloading all of our professional duties onto Roscoe, why don’t we just program him to host open houses? Imagine being able to watch the Sunday ball game for once, not having to shave, get into a suit and tie, and bring leftover cold meat and buns to a client’s house? Sure, you’ll still have to build a small trailer that Roscoe will have to use for towing that stuff to the home, and have the sellers there to let him in, but once inventors come up with opposable thumbs for Roombas, it’s next-level real estate by proxy!
5) Speaking of open houses, it would be nice if Roscoe could be a Transformer Roaming Roomba Room Measurer Photographer Open House Hosting device. For safety, Roscoe could expand from the little manhole cover size into an eight-foot Kung Fu expert with nunchucks and an automated 911 call to bring police as soon as there’s a hint of trouble.
6) Well, I hadn’t thought this as far through as I suppose I should have. Roscoe has become a broker/owner and let all the human agents go. The new sales force is entirely Transformer Roaming Roomba Room Measurer Photographer Open House Hosting Sales Agent Real Estate Para-Legal devices.
Maybe for 2021 I should just wish everyone a productive and healthy year, with the challenges of 2020 in the rear-view mirror!
Humour columnist and author Dan St. Yves was licensed with Royal LePage Kelowna for 11 years. Check out his website at danstyves.com.
