Real estate professionals are no longer prisoners of their own mantra about location, a thrice-repeated business catechism that reduces every question to a one-word response about the value of a commercial or residential property. That is, the men and women of this industry -- the people otherwise limited by the physical boundaries of a city, county or state -- are now available to potential clients throughout the world.

This access is not about selecting a real estate broker in Toronto to represent the purchase or sale of a building in Tokyo, though that is possible; it is, instead, about enjoying the wisdom of that expert in Ontario, Canada (or Columbus, Ohio), who can help a would-be client in Osaka, Japan (or elsewhere around the globe).

That access -- the idea that a real estate professional is "on call," thanks to a single application that enables users and experts to message and video chat in real-time -- is a transcendent experience, where borders dissolve into an international community, united by a common goal and inspired by a universal rule of, respectively, immediate communications and personalized assistance.

The very idea that technology can mobilize a real estate professional's presence, courtesy of a mobile device (from an iPhone or an iPad to an Android tablet or smartphone), revolutionizes that old catchphrase about location because the only location that matters now is the one with Internet connectivity.

It is this immediacy, that a community can arise by choice, a creation as spontaneous as it is relevant and rewarding, and that it be an intimate experience (by virtue of the personalized exchange of messages and face-to-face conversations between experts and users), is a boon to real estate professionals in North America and beyond.

I write these words as a friend of the real estate industry because, in my role as Founder of On-Call, a mobile application that lets users find, message and speak with (and then hire) one or more experts in hundreds of categories -- the opportunities are seemingly infinite -- I know that real estate professionals can popularize their services, monetize their knowledge and maximize their visibility in a way that conventional marketing cannot equal and no amount of advertising will ever match.

Bold statements, to be sure, but truthful assertions nonetheless.

Think about the consequences, all of them good, about having a global audience; consider the credibility that will accrue to a real estate professional, by way of positive reviews and that expert's own freedom to write a profile about him- or herself, one that captures that person's voice -- a profile emboldened by the brevity of its essentialness, and a profile that is the essence of an expert's talents -- so a user may say, "Yes. I need your insight. I value your guidance. I will pay for your intelligence."

The Medium Is (Once Again) the Message: The Long-Term Benefits for Real Estate Professionals

The overarching theme to these events, which applies to real estate professionals or any other experts, is this: The medium is, once again, the message; the dynamism of real-time communications, along with additional features of the application itself, elicits an experience that is interactive by design and informational by circumstance.

Experts adapt to the medium by seizing the purpose of the medium -- to personalize a set of skills into a story about an expert's passions and achievements, thus empowering users to make the right decisions, for the right reasons, at the right time.

The medium has real estate professionals on call, ready to replace a word of singular importance about location with a reply of universal significance.

It is a word about ubiquity, made available by technology.

It is a word that says everything because it is . . . everywhere!

Brandon Xavier is Founder of On-Call, a mobile (for iOS and Android devices) and desktop service, which enables consumers and businesses to recruit and retain professionals throughout a multitude of industries. A native of Toronto, Brandon holds a BSc in Computer Science from Staffordshire University (UK) and an MBA from the University of Toronto.