Inman News reported today that ex-NAR president Bill Chee, who delivered the “Lions Over the Hill” speech in 1993, now says that his fears of Microsoft and other threats to real estate industry at the time turned out to be unwarranted. In hindsight that may be true – but one should consider that Bill’s own words and influence may have had at least some effect on how the industry responded to threats at the time and the resulting outcome.
Bill Chee (now of Locations) is a very, very smart man, and I remember very clearly something he said to me when we were on a panel together for the Wisconsin Association of Realtors conference in 2002 – I even wrote it down at the time. He said, “I was wrong about Microsoft being the lion coming over the hill … the lion really coming over the hill is the consumer.”
I believe that our industry still has a lot of work to do to meet that next challenge. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about that …. stay tuned.