Mike Long was appointed Homestore's CEO in January 2002, bringing more than 20 years experience leading public companies including having served as president and chief executive officer of The Continuum Company, Inc.; chief executive officer of Healtheon Corporation; and chairman of WebMD, Inc., after its merger with Healtheon. Mr. Long holds a B.A. from the University of North Carolina.
According to Homestore Chairman of the Board Joe Hanauer: "Mike Long's background as a successful CEO, as well as his deep experience in technology, financial services, and the Internet, make him what we believe to be a remarkable fit. Most important, however, is that his obsession isn't with the technological aspects of his business. Rather, it's with his deep conviction that for a company to succeed it must consistently provide very strong value for its customers. This theme of providing compelling value for is what we expect you'll be seeing from in the months ahead."
Mike can be reached at
mike.long@homestore.com
As an "industry visionary", what do you see as the major changes occurring in the real estate industry?
I really see myself more of a “student” of the industry, than a visionary. My responsibilities provide me with a very broad view of the residential real estate industry and the opportunity to interact daily with the true industry visionaries. The most obvious changes I see are the increasing dissemination of information to consumers and the industry’s response of enhanced professionalism and value-added services. Self-serving efforts of companies outside of the real estate industry to convince consumers that real estate services can be completely commoditized will intensify.
What major "corporate players" are driving change and what may be their impact?
I am not exactly sure what you mean by “corporate players.”
Possibly this term is a throwback to a historical view of real estate being a cottage industry of sole proprietors.
The reality of increasing regulation, consumer expectations and service delivery has increased substantially the operating and infrastructure costs of successful real estate businesses. The national brands and large regional brokers have successfully used corporate entities to aggregate investment capital and drive expense economies.
The challenge and the opportunity for smaller players will be to creatively increase personal services while achieving similar economies, leveraging their more limited capital, to operate successfully.
The most ominous group of emerging corporate players in real estate is the large consumer Internet portals and search engines.
The original promise of the Internet being a truly egalitarian network of free flowing information, unconstrained access and easy navigation is changing whereby consumers through marketing, content, convenience and biased searches are increasingly being aggregated in fewer and fewer sites.
Early action by organized real estate established the Internet as a tool for consumers to get information and a medium for real estate professionals to promote their property listings and themselves.
By encouraging the large Internet portals and search engines to work with organized real estate’s designated information services, consumers and real estate professionals have been equally well-served.
The revenue thirst of the Internet portals and search engines is such that they now want more than participation with the industry in an advertising model, but instead seek direct participation in transaction fees by leveraging their increasingly captive consumer traffic into a referral fee network.
This effort has less to do with reducing fees, getting more information to consumers or improving consumers’ real estate experiences, but more to do with a transfer of wealth from real estate professionals. Will the industry mount an organized response to this threat as it did when the Internet was introduced?
This important “second chapter” in online real estate will have a lasting effect our industry.
Who are the "individual trendsetters" that are shaping the future real estate industry?
Our industry is blessed with a very powerful entrepreneurial spirit. In this period of rapid change, I have been impressed by the quality of leaders that have emerged in brokerages, associations and individual agents committed to improving the industry. The willingness of these leaders to organize and cooperate on issues that globally affect the industry is quite remarkable. Identifying them individually is not useful, since many of the ones I believe are most impactful maintain a low profile and work effectively through the mechanisms of organized real estate. I have not observed such effective cooperative action in other industries.
What are the expectations of the emerging real estate consumer?
Consumers have been conditioned in all respects of their daily lives to be aware of the value they receive when purchasing goods and services. Real estate services are not exempt. The challenge for the industry is to continue increasing the value of its services so the value delivered is greater than the fee paid, while continuously informing consumers of this improving value proposition. By so doing, efforts to commoditize real estate services will not be successful.
How should the Brokerage and Realtor Association / MLS respond to these real estate consumer expectations?
Real estate is a customer service industry, so the priorities should be service, service, service. Acquiring, maintaining and changing homes is typically the largest financial obligation most consumers manage their entire lives. Equity in their homes also remains the most important wealth building opportunity most consumers have. Brokerages and REALTOR Association/MLSs represent powerful tools to help real estate professionals deliver the services consumers need and want. By helping the industry improve service and squeeze out inefficiencies, consumer expectations will be well served.
What changes should a Brokerage implement to ensure profitability in the future?
Successful brokerages of the future will be experts in building their brand awareness, managing their advertising expenses, particularly the transformation from offline to online advertising to promote their brand and property listings, training and improving the effectiveness of their agents, and positioning their ancillary services more centrally to consumers’ buying decisions.
What role do you see the Realtor Association / MLS playing to ensure Broker profitability?
The most important factor is to ensure that the “offer of cooperation” among REALTORS® is upheld. This encourages the healthy evolution of larger and smaller businesses…and new opportunities for REALTORS®.
Based upon your vision of the future of the real estate industry, what are you doing to help influence positive change?
I share the responsibility and opportunity to influence one of the industry’s most powerful tools, REALTOR.com®. As the official site of the National Association of REALTORS® and the largest consumer real estate site on the Internet (more than three times larger than its nearest competitor), REALTOR.com® stands as one of the industry’s strongest offensive and defensive weapons to enhance the role of REALTORS® in an increasingly treacherous online world. To further improve its effectiveness, REALTOR.com® must be incredibly easy and cost-effective to use. We are making great strides to accomplish this goal. Likewise, REALTOR.com® must be equally world class in promoting property listings and real estate professionals alike.
Our industry has perfected over many decades the promotion of real estate in the offline world. Now that more consumers go online for real estate information than to the offline world, such as the newspaper classifieds, we need to “professionalize” online marketing of real estate. There has been extensive experimentation the last few years with what works and what doesn’t work in the online world. As the industry’s largest site, no one has more knowledge than REALTOR.com® of what consumers want online. We are packaging this wealth of information with new and exciting services in a new offering called the REALTOR.com Marketing System® to optimize the entire online real estate experience for consumers, brokers and agents. It is designed to integrate seamlessly into our customers’ branding and promotional strategies. During 2003, we will be making this service along with the power of REALTOR.com® available to the industry. It is our hope that the value of this service will be so compelling as to encourage every practicing real estate professional to take advantage of it as an essential tool for their success.
What books would you recommend as a "must read" that have influenced your
vision?
There are a lot of good business books offering methods and advice. I do not believe there is any one book that has influenced my vision enough to be considered a “must read.” I have been more heavily influenced by the study of human behavior in historical and classical literature. My vision is simple…the relentless pursuit of serving customer needs is the most effective way to build a successful enterprise.
What advice would you give Brokerages and Realtor Associations / MLSs to assure they stay relevant and successful in the future?
Continue to be forward thinking, embrace the need to change when appropriate, and most importantly, remember your people, in this case the REALTORS®, are and always will be your greatest asset.
