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Brad Inman took to the stage at the New York Hilton Midtown Thursday morning to set the scene for Queen’s stately rock classic “We Are the Champions” at New York’s Inman Connect .
He suggested that the song embodied how real estate professionals persevere. “It’s been a weird year,” Inman told the rap crowd. “You are important.”
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“You’ve been vilified, this industry has been sued, you’ve been vilified in the press and you’re hanging out to dry in a bad housing market,” he told an audience gathered at the New York Hilton Midtown in Manhattan on Thursday. I told the people.
“Despite all this, you are a survivor,” the Inman founder continued. “How do you know? Because tough times don’t last, but tough people do.”
Inman asked the audience to pat himself on the back for getting through all these challenges over the past few years.
Inman said the way real estate professionals became trapped in an unfamiliar zone makes him think of the experience of Sergei Krikalev, the Soviet cosmonaut who was stranded on the Mir space station for 311 days in 1991. I said. He was assigned and the USSR collapsed.
brad inman
“If you’ve ever talked to an astronaut, it’s a very traumatic thing,” Inman said. “And he survived, he had to struggle, he had to focus, he had to work to survive, and he He was a hero because of his endurance.”
“I think you’re kind of trapped. You’re trapped in an unfamiliar zone and it wasn’t expected, but you survived,” Inman told agents.
There are incredible opportunities for real estate professionals, Inman continued. Because last year, the global real estate market saw transaction volume of $8.3 trillion. It is predicted to reach $10 trillion in two years.
New research from the University of Oxford also shows that homeownership contributes to longer lives, as homeowners can build equity and wealth, which in turn allows them to live longer with less stress. Masu.
“So what have we got here?” Inman asked. “You were stuck in space, and now you’re back on Earth. You’re working in a market that’s going to be $10 trillion, and you’re not selling a house, you’re selling a life. ”
With such credentials, Inman said he is renaming the Inman community “Champions of the World.”
He calls 2024 “the year of truly incredible things,” pointing to SpaceX Starship’s “chopstick” landing, how AI is being developed exponentially in the US, and the meteoric rise of self-driving taxis in cities. We continued to discuss what we were doing. Like San Francisco.
“And real estate, you had an incredible year and the year before,” Inman said.
He said the antitrust laws that hit the industry with full force seemed to come out of nowhere to everyday real estate professionals, but they simmered for a long time while industry leaders remained complacent. He said he was there.
According to a study by Caltech researchers cited by Inman, humans can only process 10 bits of information per second, but real estate professionals throw billions of bits at them and find it “overwhelming.” You can.
But agents can choose to push back the information, Inman noted.
“It’s like when Lincoln said, ‘You can choose to be happy.’ You make that decision. ”
brad brass sculpture
Inman added that there is opportunity in the industry in the near future and agents need to be focused to see it coming.
Inman has a brass sculpture on his desk, which was given to him by his wife. “This Olympian figure is holding up the globe, like he’s holding up the earth and he’s riding the turtle,” he said.
Looking at the sculpture these days, Inman is like a real estate expert who carried the weight of bad people in the industry and had to straddle the turtle representing the housing market moving astride the turtle. I realized that.
“Last year was the nadir for the real estate industry, and we’re going to see Phoenix rise in L.A., as we’ve seen the last few years by surprise,” Inman said. Devastating wildfires destroyed the city this month.
In a break from the anxiety and fear of the past few years, Inman said he feels a different “atmosphere” is coming this year.
“So change is ahead,” he said.
New competitors that the industry cannot currently imagine revolve around home search, leads, DIY real estate, transaction management, and more.
“Each of these new innovations will be an opportunity for you,” Inman said.
But as a result, new agents need to hone their problem-solving skills. For example, if higher interest rates become the new normal, agents may need to become financial experts.
Buyer agents will also be just as important as listing agents, Inman added.
“I think the opportunity now is on the buy side,” he said. “Why? Again, problem solving is required.”
And real estate professionals need to match their actions to their words, truly putting consumers first and promoting transparency in the industry, Inman said. Poor business practices and unethical actors are entrenched.
Now is the time for the industry to reinvent itself, Inman added, but that can’t come from industry leaders – it has to come from individual practitioners.
“It’s not NAR, it’s not the consultants, it’s not the speakers on the Inman stage. It’s you. We’ve turned things upside down to the point where you all have more power than you’ve ever had. ” he said.
The industry didn’t have the leaders it needed to get through tough times, Inman said. It is now up to individuals to be transparent with their clients, explain how their committees work, and be accountable.
“This is not a new strategy, but it is now a requirement for everyone,” Inman said.
“And why? Shady real estate agents have always been in the industry, but now the sun is shining brightly on everyone and you can’t escape it and those people are going out of business.”
Industry reform will also improve the bottom line for individual practitioners, Inman said, through more sales and increased consumer confidence in the industry.
Finally, Inman returned to another space-related anecdote, talking about the Booker Prize-winning novel “Orbital by Samantha Harvey.”
Based on NASA facts, the novel follows six astronauts in space as they surround the Earth and witness its “vulnerabilities.” Readers witness these astronauts at the top of their profession, pushing the limits of what can be accomplished.
“Why did you develop this fictional crew in this book?” Inman asked the audience.
“For the past two years, like an astronaut, you’ve been working… you’ve pushed your professional limits as much as they did. But at the core of this novel, you… Like some of these astronauts, they had time to reflect and perhaps began to realize how much, if anything, they had.
“You probably have a new perspective on your own life, and you are beginning to understand a new future.”
Inman again reminded the audience that tough times don’t last, but tough people do.
“You’re tough. You’re the champion of the world,” Inman said as the Queen carried him backstage.
Email Lillian Dickerson
