During a flight to my latest speaking engagement I was reading Collier’s “Knowledge” magazine. There was a great article regarding the expectations of current Generation V workers. That’s “V” as in “virtual”.

This made me think about all the potential impacts that Generation V will have on the commercial real estate brokerage industry as well as individual brokers in the years ahead. As if social marketing wasn’t enough of a paradigm shift for many seasoned veterans, we will now to need to contend the challenges of the V generation.

Truth be told, we are already in the V generation and have been for several years. Virtual assistants are no longer a revolutionary concept. Perhaps you hired a part time assistant who worked from their house? This the first step towards “V integration”. You know, I should trademark that one.. “Vintegration”.

Our company is already virtually integrated. I home-office in North Carolina yet have a marketing team in Florida. Our cold calling team is in Minnesota and our research team is in India. Not Indiana. India. Our coaching clients are located throughout North America, but we have only physically met a fraction of them. However we see them all each time we speak, via web camera and other standard software packages.

But what impact will Generation V have on commercial real estate brokerage. Today information is everywhere and each day another market exchange is launched on the internet. Is a broker’s “market knowledge” so commoditized that it is irrelevant? Brick and mortar offices with receptionists, assistants and internal marketing teams are no longer viable business solutions. Personal private offices are more the product of legacy and ego constraints than they are of necessity. Will the broker’s role evolve to more of a transaction manager, and if so are project management skills more important than deal skills?

Perhaps commercial leases and sales will go the way of CarMax and Ebay. Either here is the price, or here is the product/need, go ahead and bid on it. If so, where does the broker fit?

The bottom line is brokerage has historically been a belly to belly business. But IT WILL become an exchange of an owner/user sitting in a coffee shop having a webcam conversation with his real estate advisor/project manager, who is located across the country (or world) on an iPad/Android like device. Either way, like social marketing you can either adapt or die. For now enjoy your plush office space.. just don’t get too comfortable.