Sunday, April 27, 2008

Brokers taking on a younger look

An aging industry scrambles to draw Generation X agents who speak the tech-savvy language of today's home buyers.

Young brokers such as Lisa Johnson, right, are in great need. The real estate industry is getting older - the median age of brokers is 52 - while customers are young (the median age of first-time buyers in Massachusetts is 32.)
Traditional approaches don't work on this younger set, who prefer to do most of the legwork themselves.
So the industry is now scrambling to recruit young agents such as Johnson, those in their 20s and 30s who have established online identities, are fluent in IM and text messaging, and regulars on social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace.