One of the most telling Twitter posts from last weekend’s annual convention said, “When asked who’s using social media, most of those who raised

Updates from the United Country technology team.

hands had phones in the other hand.”

Technology today is ubiquitous. We use it to bank, for travel, for communication and to look up words like “ubiquitous.”

It’s no different for people buying homes, land and commercial property. With all kinds of relevant information at consumers’ fingertips for everything under the sun, it’s no surprise that they expect a real estate professional to come with the goods as it relates to property buying.

This is an exciting time at United Country because we are starting to see a few years of hard work around technology pay off in many ways. As we move forward with this blog, I will be posting updates about our new initiatives, strategies and investments in the world of technology at United Country.

The best way to learn anything is to shut up and listen. The technology team has tried to do that at United Country with our agents, and after thousands of conversations with agents, brokers, and consumers the technology team has come up with a three-pronged approach to our technology. All of our initiatives, which I discuss in more detail in future posts, will fall into one of these three areas:

• Consumer Strategies
• Lead Aggregation
• Agent/Office Tools

We use consumer strategies to represent our sellers and get the word out about our inventory. These strategies encompass a number of technology aspects, from property trackers to search engine optimization (SEO) to mobile phone applications. Just last week at convention, we announced our upcoming iPhone application.

You can raise your hand to ask for more information in a number of ways. Lead aggregation helps us work with buyers to learn exactly how they would like to receive information. United Country is continually working to ensure that we communicate with our consumers in the way they prefer, in a time-sensitive manner, with respect to their privacy.

Just like all of the tools we offer affiliates, our technology programs are provided to empower our brokers and agents to better serve buyers and sellers. It’s hard to make technology easy. As a matter of fact, real talent in software can be seen in simplicity. And at United Country, we’re working to give extremely usable, next-generation technology to our agents and brokers so they can market in ways they only dreamed about years ago.

What technology do you use most when buying or selling property?