Whenever my husband and I see one of those telltale signs of trouble, we fall back on an old joke. "The cat is on the roof," we say. I don’t remember where I first heard it, and it has many variations, but it goes something like this.

A man is away on vacation, and his brother has been house-sitting for him. When he calls home to check on things, the brother says, "Your cat died."

"What?" the man replies in shock.

"Yep. Dead. Bummer."

"How could you be so insensitive, so cruel?" says the man. "You don’t break bad news like that. First you might have said that my cat was on the roof. Then, the next day, you might have told me that he had wandered to the edge, but you are trying to coax him down. Next you could say that he fell off the roof, but the vet is looking after him. Then you could tell me he didn’t make it. This way, I would have been better prepared."

"Sorry," said the brother. "I should have thought of that." After a brief pause, he added, "By the way, Grandma’s on the roof."

This is only funny when it is a joke. When it is your cat up there, it becomes quite serious. I have been getting the sense a lot lately that the cat may be on the roof in nearly every facet of my real estate world. The key is in recognizing the signs and adjusting to the likely outcome ahead of the inevitable.

First, a few years ago, we began to notice that the newspaper advertising cat was on the roof. Admittedly, I was slow to process the message. I was still spending the equivalent of the population of Delaware (expressed in gold bricks) on in-line ads in the Sunday Real Estate section long after the fatal fall, but I have since adapted. Among other things, I started migrating my marketing dollars online. And, I started a little blog.

For the record, Prudential has been exceedingly good to us and good for us. Their management team is comprised of some of the finest, most dedicated professionals I have ever met, and if you are a new agent on your way home from the licensing exam, they would be a fine company with which to associate. They are supportive and agent-centric, but they are still big business. For us, we are at a point where we need the autonomy and the flexibility to turn on a dime, the ability to adopt new technologies, tools and approaches quickly, without corporate consensus. The bad news is that our new venture does not have the backing of Warren Buffett; the good news is that he won’t be calling the shots.

I could be dead wrong of course. What I think is a cat on the roof may simply be an accumulation of fall leaves that blew in during the most recent storm. But, it can’t be denied that this business of real estate has changed dramatically in the past decade, and I will argue that there is no going back. It’s how we move forward that will shape our industry and ready us for the future. I can’t save the cat, but I can be prepared to cope with what I think I’m being told. Oh, and if you see me on the roof, send help.

Kris Berg is broker-owner of San Diego Castles Realty. She also writes a consumer-focused real estate blog, The San Diego Home Blog.

***

What’s your opinion? Leave your comments below or send a letter to the editor. To contact the writer, click the byline at the top of the story.

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