RISMEDIA, March 9 — I was having a pleasant lunch with my banker of 20 years recently when the subject turned to the real estate market and what he sees as already in process: a serious adjustment in housing prices and a serious problem in defaulting homeowners.

We bantered about the 26% increase in foreclosures, the fact that most owners of homes in California have less than 30% equity in their homes, that whole communities in the high end are heavily salted with 100% financings, and several other harbingers of doom.

"That's one of the reasons we got out of the real estate lending business" he intoned, "We sold our operation and we are not doing any real estate lending right now except Blue-Chip loans for Blue-Chip customers."

I started wondering: What happens when last year's high demand becomes this year's glut as the speculators leave real estate for precious metals, collectables or whatever the flavor-of-the-month investment is? Who is going to sell all that foreclosed property into a depressed marketplace? Why, professional real estate agents and brokers, that's who!

But then as I read the New York Times Magazine (March 5, 2006), I came across an article, "Endangered Species" by Stephen J Dubner and Steven D. Levitt, which presented a sobering view of where we are all going, and they say it isn't to the Promised Land.

The article presented an interesting dichotomy: the median income level of all agents actually fell—to $49,300 from $52,200—from 2002 to 2004, one of the hottest markets in American history. The article compares real estate agents to such vanished neighborhood fixtures as travel agents and stockbrokers, who, they say, must face that dreaded new scourge—the Internet. The article goes on to highlight discount brokers, predict upheaval in our industry, and generally fails to fill one with optimism for the future of real estate agents.

I was struck by an overpowering thought: the authors are bright, but they are looking at a half-empty glass, when the glass is half full.

For example: something like 85% of home buyers chose a real estate professional to help them find a home or sell their home last year. Perhaps surprisingly, 18% of buyers and sellers found their Realtor on the Internet. Seventy-seven percent of all home purchases were made with assistance from the Internet.

It seems to me that the Internet presents an opportunity for elite Realtors, not an impediment. It seems to me that whether real estate agents survive the slowdown and possible tough times coming depends not on matters beyond their control, but by matters within their control: fight back! Harness the power of the Internet to help you list and sell. If your customers are flocking to the Internet, you flock right there with them.

For some time, now, this column has been humbly trying to suggest that you need to maximize your online marketing. Our company advertises with success stories of agents and brokers who are harnessing the power of the Internet.

Online marketing is all about "location," we continually tell you. Some of you are listening, but many of you seem to feel that these warnings don't apply to you. In fact, most Realtors think: "that stuff is for the big guys, not for me." (Of course, as the Times tells us, most Realtors make about $50,000 annually, too.

Do you think there could be any connection in those two disparate facts? Do you think that the most successful Realtors feel that way? I'm telling you "that stuff" is more important for the average Realtor than the big guy. Who gets run over first: the biggest, or the smallest? The big guys have the capital, the know-how and the savvy to maximize their efforts. You need to grab hold of every tool you can to level the playing field and compete in the Internet venue. Fight back.

We all know that warnings of coming "Armageddon" are seldom as dire as they seem when first sounded. But, to travel agents, stockbrokers, bookstores, directory advertising and newspaper readership, you can add real estate agents as a diminishing career path over the period of the next paradigm shift in the way we all do business: through the Internet.

Nevertheless, there will still be plenty of us who survive, and there will still be plenty of us prospering. Those will be the agents who were quick to realize that they must be found on the Internet by people searching for homes and information; that they must have a resource, not just a Web site, and that they must start redirecting their entire thinking pattern from print to electronic media, gradually but permanently.

Those will be the people who, instead of building a file of things they should do, actually go out and do them. Not when the situation is dire, but now, when there is still time to avoid disaster. Build your Internet presence. Make it easy to find you. Innovate. Fight hard for your way of doing business if you want to keep it.

For, if you do not, we'll all be watching properties sold on a themed site, just as the majority of books are now sold on Amazon.com. The time to move is now. Are you coming with us?