Technology and Real Estate

Technology and Real Estate

 

I’ve come to enjoy saying that the Real Estate Market has changed and watching the person I am talking to immediately start nodding their head. Like when I tell one my old “stories” to family members and a small smile creeps to their lips and they recognize the story. (I don’t  tell jokes, I tell ‘true’ stories).  I wait for the nods and then stop them with: “But it has not changed just in the way you are thinking.”

“Huh?”

“Yes, it has changed because of the short sales, the foreclosures, and the great retreat in house prices.  But it has changed in another, more lasting way.  The media and pundits have been giving lip service to the free flow of information on the internet, but the real estate marketers and home buyers have ultimately embraced technology in a huge way in the last six months.

“Technology has changed the way buyers shop, Realtors market, and  how deals are closed.”

The clients search for houses, not agents, so a web site that sells the agent generally gets very little traffic or staying power. It’s about the search for a home and the easier we can make that; (with a map search, for example) the more information rich we can make that, and the more pictures, virtual tours, financial information, and the more content rich the web site experience is, the more likely it is that there will be a match between the broker and the prospect. 

The most popular real estate site in the world in Realtor.com.  Compare two listings is Realtor.com. The first one HERE is one of our listings, it has many pictures, lots of content, and is an ENHANCED listing (at extra cost to us).  The second listing (here) is a standard listing (free to the agent), it has fewer pictures and less content.. While both listing give information it is the first listing that will go further serving the client and giving him the content rich environment he is looking for.  (If you are going to list your home, make certain that your agent pays for enhanced listings on Realtor.com for your home. Ask her!)

From the agents view point, it is important to know WHO is searching, because at the end of the day, we make our money by selling a home.  If we as agents fail to serve the client, we will fail to “capture” him or her, and we fail to build a lasting relationship.

Today’s internet marketing is all about lead capture, getting to know your client. If we don’t know who we are serving, it is impossible to build anything except a one way relationship.

In order to encourage a client to tell us who they are as they search for their home, we need to give them reason. We also need to make them comfortable enough to share their personal information.  We do this but offering valuable reports and personalized information like  Market America Realty Market Snapshots,  Broker Price Opinions, Comparative Market Analysis, and immediacy of information that they can not get elsewhere. For example if you  click on Market America Realty Market Snapshots, you will be sent to what is called a landing page. In exchange for some personal information about you, we prepare a customized report for you. We also pay for placement on top sites like HOMEGAIN. Sites like Homegain, Zillow, and Trulia all charge us for search placement and lead capture.  But again, it’s about the content rich search for homes experience for the buyer or seller.   In addition to paying for top placement for our own website: www.marketamericarealty.com , we also pay these tops sites for helping sell our homes.

If you come to our Market America Realty and Investments, Inc. office you will be invited into the ZIP room.  In the ZIP room is a 50 inch flat screen TV hooked up to the internet. On this TV we will tour you, via Google Maps, our own website, and Street View features.  You can virtually drive around the neighborhoods you are interested in, starting from a satellite view we zoom into the various neighborhoods, giving you a clear orientation, we then can zoom to a street view and give you street level views courtesy of Google. Pick a home and we can go inside on a virtual tour. Want to go see it? We schedule the showing and we are on our way.

While we are driving we pull out our iPod to check on the listing information on a home we pass. We have subscribed to myAgent IDX, a free application for you, a GPS guided tour of for sale homes right in your hand.

At Market America Realty and Investments, Inc. we are cloud computing; all our files are accessible by our authorized agents from any where, any time, any internet connected device, including smart phones.  When we take pictures of a new listing, the pictures can be up-loaded to our files from the field.   Need to change a shared document? Change it and it changes on all agents computers immediately.  Got a new lead?  It’s texted by our software directly to the agents smart phone  Got a new voice mail?  It will be emailed to you on your phone.

Our phone system is also on the cloud.  Call for a residential sales person and all agents on duty will get the call. Need to take an hour off fromn the phone because you are with clients? Use your smart phone to tell the system you  are busy or forward your calls to your team partner.

Agents need a form for a listing?  Download it from the cloud. Need to know what REO listings have just come is?  Our agents can sign on to the cloud and read the latest summary, if they happen to be looking at it as it is updated, they will see the update take place.

Yes the market has changed, and we are changing with it.