Property Point 3 October

“There are a lot of Asians here.”

Part of the journey of life is that we go from being a young person embarrassed by what our parents do or say to being a parent who embarrasses our own children.

My university-student daughter, Bianca, was in Mackay for holidays recently and I took her for lunch one day to the excellent new Japanese restaurant in Victoria St.

It was the first time we had been there and soon after we sat down I made the comment about there being “a lot of Asians” in the restaurant.

“That was a bit loud, Dad,” my slightly embarrassed daughter observed.

If my father had made that comment to me when I was my daughter’s age, I also would have been embarrassed. There would have been a perceived racist undertone that I would have preferred had been kept quiet.

But the comment back then would have had a different sentiment to my comment years later. I was pointing out – in a too-loud, deliberately clumsy dad way – that it was a good sign there were so many Asians in the Japanese restaurant.

It was also intended as a bit of a joke that I knew would slightly embarrass my daughter, which is another fun part of life’s journey … deliberately embarrassing our children.

Soon after my observation about the clientele, we noticed a robot delivering food. The robot looked like a modern version of R2 D2 from Star Wars as it glided through the restaurant. It had a friendly pussy cat face and I noticed young children gathered around it to say hello.

Accountants will be able to tell you whether replacing human waiters with robots is an economically viable move but there is definitely a novelty value that is exciting for kids and will help attract more young families to a restaurant.

The robo-waiter is just another step in the digital world’s advancement into our lives.

At open homes and private inspections these days we enter people’s details into a data base that allows us to follow up and provide further information.

The system we use at Gardian automatically texts buyers a digital offer to purchase form straight after the open house that they can seamlessly fill in and lodge.

It is an example of digital technology improving the service and creating greater efficiency in the business. I don’t have to spend time finding people’s email addresses, attach offer to purchase forms and email them to buyers. It happens automatically.

Digitalisation means people can inquire directly from a property ad on a real estate site, book inspections and efficiently move through the process of buying a home. There are many other ways – from property videos, social media algorithms to Q-codes – that digital technology is  making selling real estate better and more efficient for buyers and sellers.

The big question is: How far will it go? When will robots be conducting open homes? Will the robo-agents have friendly pussy cat faces or will there be a mixture of models; over-weight middle-aged male versions, super-friendly female versions that don’t look as good as their photos, sharp looking young male versions in loafers and no socks.

A point I will make about the excellent Japanese restaurant in Victoria St is that there wasn’t just the robo-waiter in attendance. There were also human waiters; friendly, smiling people who made eye contact and ensured it was more than a transactional, detached experience between paying customer and a business providing a service.

I also feel that the attraction is in the novelty, particularly for kids. If every restaurant had a robot it would soon become oh so ho-hum.

So perhaps if future real estate agencies had robots, the ones with the point of difference would be those that went back to having over-weight middle-aged human men and deceptively photographically enhanced human women.

Here’s hoping.

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