Prior to my attending Cornell I worked as a real estate broker in Washington state. So, during the lecture on strong triadic closure I kept thinking about how the idea of one individual (node) with a strong relationship to two other people (edges) will then almost automatically create at least a weak relationship between these other people, who may have otherwise never met. This concept is a great model for referrals that members of the Real Estate industry (Real Estate Agents/Brokers, Mortgage Loan Originators, Home Inspectors, Title Reps., Contractors, and R.E. Attorneys) receive from past clients that they have built strong relationships with. Other than a few old school hard sales specialists (You can think of them as used car salesmen) any member of this industry will tell you that referrals are how they stay in business.

With the development and mainstreaming of the internet many members of the Real Estate industry (especially real estate agents) have found it more difficult to make a living because they are no longer the center of all information. In the past real estate agents were the sole available source of information on property information and so people were forced to seek out agents and make all the effort in developing relationships. In today’s world consumers have into the millions of sources for this same information via the internet. This expansion of availability to information and the real estate agents reactionary activity of trying to hoard information has led to the weakening of the agents importance.

Today we stand at a crossroad for the real estate agent, we will either see the death of this century old profession due to their insistence in taking part in information hoarding activities or the rebirth and resurgence of their roll. Due to the vast size of agents social contacts they can play the role of “great gate keepers” interconnecting multiple social networks by freely distributing information of not only a real estate nature. They can be again the “go to guy,” for information on job openings, area demographics, contractor ratings, and other service providers. How can they do all this you ask? Buy developing online social networks were they can build relationships faster in with more people. It seems as though some have moved in this direction with growth of RE social networking sites like Active Rain. But, to this point these opportunities have been under utilized. It will take more than having a blog site or internet business card agents call their websites.

 http://home.uchicago.edu/~syverson/realestate.pdf