Buying and selling a house has always seemed a very personal transaction to me…not to mention the largest and potentially most important financial transaction most people experience in their lifetime.

It seems the business of real estate (the real estate industry in particular) has been one of the slowest to embrace technology, with most of the more significant advances happening in the last 2-3 years.

According to NAR, over 80 percent of people start their real estate search online. For today’s real estate agents, the opportunity to build relationships starts the minute a potential buyer or seller taps the keyboard. To capture those keystrokes as early as possible, the real estate industry has been scrambling to verse itself in the ways of technology.

The most recent challenge: mastering the art of social media, where online applications like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn have taken networking to new heights. In an industry where your sphere of influence is the single most important driver of your book of business, these social networks seem like a dream come true. Agents can now reach hundreds, even thousands, of people, without setting foot outside their front doors – and without spending a dime.

This is a major contrast to the old-school traditions of building relationships that used to start with desk time at the office, talking to strangers in the supermarket, one-on-one schmoozing with everyone you know and pricey marketing tactics like billboards and mailers – it does require a sea-change in thinking within the real estate community.

As a result, broad acceptance of social networks in real estate has been slow – there are always those brave few that quickly embrace and leverage technology – but the majority of agents have been slow to jump in.

Some complain that social media can be time-consuming; others point out that its value has yet to be proven. Many stand firm in the belief that real estate requires a personal touch.

They’re not entirely wrong. By its very nature, real estate will likely always require some level of face-to-face interaction. Buyers and sellers benefit from meeting in person; from seeing a home first-hand; and most importantly, from working with a trusted and trained professional.

In stark contrast to the high frequency of those searching for homes online, the number of homes that are sold by owner is still under 20 percent, pointing to the notion that consumers still need someone to guide them through the complexities of a real estate transaction.

The good news is that the real estate industry is starting to more broadly adopt the use of technology to facilitate building real world relationships. The fact is, these two worlds need to live side-by-side. It would be a mistake for either to think that the other is going away anytime soon.   There are now a plethora of sites that foster social interaction at some level, each enabling an agent to demonstrate their unique voice and hopefully engender trust with their future clients or share valuable experiences with their peers.

Because essentially what social networks do is extend that old school tradition, letting the real estate agent reach out from their desks into the new streets of the internet and meet up with the people who are searching for the houses that they want to visit there.

At the end of the day, both online social networking and in-person interactions in real estate are about being responsive to the consumer and rather than turning over the pages of a paper in the old school way your buyer is now clicking their way through cyberspace.

Being available in person, online, via cell, via text, via Twitter – it’s all connected. The key to survival in the current real estate market will be the ability to leverage both old-school and new-school skills effectively.