Scott Shaw on his boat in Vancouver
Sutton Group Realty Services opened its first real estate office in North Vancouver in 1983. By 1990, it was serving the Prairies; by 1992, it was operating in almost all of the provinces; two years later, the franchisor had expanded in Quebec. Now, as Sutton Group moves into its next quarter century, the company has some 200 offices with approximately 9,300 salespeople across Canada. Sutton Group was an early adopter of technology, setting up a national corporate website in 1995 and offering its Realtors personalized email addresses and web pages. Recently, Sutton’s president and CEO Scott Shaw spoke to REM senior editor Kathy Bevan about the strong role technology continues to play at Sutton Group and throughout the real estate industry, as he shared some of his thoughts about the next 25 years.
REM: We’re seeing a new generation of young people coming into the real estate industry, people who are used to having cell phones in one ear, digital music players in the other, while they’re networking through Facebook and Twitter. What do brokers have to do to support these new, techno-savvy Realtors?
Shaw: The most important thing may not be having all the tools, all the technology, in your office. For that, a franchisor or the industry can assist – there are a lot of resources out there to assist. The most important thing for the manager/broker is to understand the needs of that younger, newer group. Do you understand what they’re talking about on Facebook or Twitter? Sometimes, there is very little difference to being a parent with children. I have two children in their 30s and they speak a different language than me. If I didn’t try to understand what they’re talking about, there would be a world of difference in how they would relate to me. There’s very little difference in the office space. Understand what they’re talking about, understand their needs. Business 101 remains the same – it’s how you administer Business 101.
REM: With younger people coming into the marketplace, are you seeing more part-time people or more full-time people joining Sutton Group?
Shaw: That’s a very interesting question. Because of technology, the Internet, social media, Realtors can work almost any time of the day. Fifteen to 20 years ago, you could only really work when your client was up. Now, the distance is no longer an issue and the time is no longer an issue. Realtors may work eight to 10 hours while everyone else is sleeping. So-called part-time and full-time become totally different issues. It’s how dedicated, how focused they are working on a particular career, that is what is going to drive their success or not.
If we go back two decades, in those days very successful mothers of school-aged children could only work between 9:30 am to 3 pm. Before 9:30, they had to take their kids to school; after 3 pm, they had to take them to after-school activities. So they were often viewed as being part-time Realtors. But with today’s technology, they can work as much while waiting at a soccer meet – their cell phone never stops, their laptop never stops, their Blackberry or other device never stops. The line between so-called part-time and full-time Realtor, that line blurs. They’re at the job all the time, so I would say they’re always full-time. When you can never turn your business off, it may appear you’re only at work a few hours every day, but you’re always “on”.
REM: As someone who’s been in the real estate business for a long time, what are the most helpful of the new social media tools you are using?
Shaw: I try to be on a lot of social media, mainly as a way to stay close to the marketplace and know what’s happening and how to advise our people to do things. But as far as I can see, what social media tools are doing is not new – they’re just using certain technology to do what Realtors have been doing for a very long time. That’s because basically, the real estate business is a networking business.
Many sales reps and brokers do their networking in the old-fashioned way. They network at parties, at different occasions, they network through their church, their community centre, they organize school gatherings and they give community support, many of them by giving back to their favourite charity or community event. We have a program called Sutton Spirit, which encourages our people to do that.
It doesn’t really matter if you’re using technology to meet up with your client, or using the good old-fashioned method of driving up to the community centre or to the church to meet them. The end result is exactly the same. The only difference is that, if you use technology, you can “meet” with them pretty much anywhere, anytime you want to do so. If you don’t use technology, then you’re more limited by the distance, the time of day.
REM: The appropriateness of using Internet technology and aggregators to more widely share listing data has recently made headlines in our magazine as well as elsewhere – what are your thoughts on Saskatchewan’s recent agreement to use aggregator Point2 Technologies to disseminate listing data and Century 21 Canada’s legal battle to prevent its listing data from being shared by aggregator Zoocasa.com?
Shaw: There are two totally different directions – you want to have more exposure, but at the same time you want to ensure the integrity of the data is there. Organized real estate, the boards, the associations, CREA are all looking at this from a protection point of view, while the aggregators are looking at it from a wider exposure point of view. Those two will have to converge at some future point – they will have to move a little bit to the other side, or else they will continue to be at opposite sides of a pendulum, swinging back and forth until something happens. Otherwise the aggregators will always have less formalized data being aggregated, without complete integrity, while organized real estate and companies will have protected data without having enough exposure.
How we can look after both the integrity of the data and maximize the exposure – that’s where we’re going to have to be very smart people, to put both of those together.
REM: Sutton Group was an early proponent of large single offices with hundreds of salespeople. Heading into your next 25 years, is the mega-office still your basic business model?
Shaw: Absolutely, because we believe – especially in metropolitan areas – that you can have offices with many hundreds of agents registered there, because they can travel an hour east or an hour west. And by the time their client has to be at a certain place, they can travel there. But other than that – with technology’s help – they can do market surveys, client communications and so on without having to be in the next block.
As we all know, to do business Realtors mostly act on their own, but they want to have the support of a brokerage behind them. Having a large office definitely gives them that advantage. Certainly, in a remote area, the size is different again. There we have technology to be able to join offices together, through IP phones and the Internet. In Quebec, we have offices of 200 to 300 people who are spread across many miles. We also have offices like that on Vancouver Island. We also have offices of two to five people, spread out over very large areas, and we use technology to connect them.
That will be the trend. Distance will not be a barrier anymore. And as the issue of travel becomes less relevant for agents, buyers and sellers, what you need is to be able to service them. Short of showing people the house – which is when you need to be in front of them – you can be anywhere, serving them through the Internet, cell phones, other technology. You can service them anytime, at midnight if your client is in another time zone – you can service them whenever and however you wish. That is our challenge, but it is also our opportunity.
