How Technology Is Improving How Homeowners Sell Their House

 

The way that you can sell your house today is way different from how the entire process worked even as recently as 20-30 years ago. Back then, real estate agents would pound the pavement to get potential buyers to show up to your open house, interacting mostly with other real estate agents while sellers waited to find out what the situation was. While buyers might drive past homes looking at great curb appeal, they didn’t really do much on their own. 

 

Now, homeowners and buyers have direct access to so much information. Thanks to the internet, smartphones, and laptop computers, you’re always one click away from finding the homes you’re looking for and dissecting the data in specific neighborhoods and housing markets. According to the National Association of Realtors, 89% of buyers today rely on online tools to help them find their next home. 

 

“Homeowners have so much power in today’s real estate market,” says Jamell Givens – Partner, Property Acquisitions for Leave the Key Homebuyers, a real estate solutions company that buys Long Island homes. “It’s almost impossible now to imagine trying to sell a house without the internet and both buyers and sellers who want to be competitive need to take advantage of the latest technologies.” 

 

Let’s take a closer look at some ways technology is improving how homeowners sell their houses. 

 

Photography & Virtual Staging

Gone are the days of taking some photos and putting them on a flyer or local magazine and hoping for the best. These days, with so many buyers looking to online listings when they want to search for potential homes, the photography involved has to be top-notch and high quality. If you’re unable to visit a house in-person, or just want to get a feel for what the interiors look like, there’s no better way than through good photos, and professional real estate photographers have upped their game to whole new levels in recent years. 

 

Technological advances have made photo editing a breeze with the latest software and it’s simple to upload photos digitally to the MLS or any real estate platform, not to mention share these images via social media. And while not everyone can afford home staging, virtual staging has emerged as a viable way to get the same idea across. Photographers and digital experts can expertly insert furnishings, decor, and even people and animals into photos of rooms to provide buyers with a true sense of what it looks like to live there. For those who can’t afford to stage, it’s a valuable and affordable way to make your house even more appealing. 

 

Video Tours

Recent world events have shown the need to showcase real estate from afar and there’s perhaps no better way to do that than with video tours. That can mean virtual tours that allow the user to control where they go and what they see. It can also mean a recorded video by a real estate professional walking the viewer through the residence and pointing out unique features along the way. And it can also mean a live Zoom video chat where the real estate professional can interact with the buyer on the other end. Some might say that video tours are the real estate wave of the future but the numbers seem to say that the future is now. 

 

Listing Syndication

Can you imagine trying to explain Zillow or Redfin to someone in 1970? The idea that you can log into the internet and see home listings anywhere around the country at any moment might seem ludicrous if it wasn’t so commonplace now. Instead of just listing your house on the local MLS listings, that information gets syndicated to all kinds of real estate companies such as Zillow, Redfin, Neighborhoods.com, and more. This way, multiple sites can get correct information about the listing and share it with their specific audience and leads. 

 

Even more than that, the data that you can find on each individual site gives you a good sense of how popular the listing might be. You’ll be able to see how many people have “saved” or “favorited” the listing as well as note the time spent on the page, how many appointments have been made, and even see heat maps that show where users’ eyes are drawn in the listing. This is valuable information for marketers but the resources are still amazing for buyers and sellers on their own as well. 

 

Phone Apps

These days, who has time to sit down at a desk, log onto their computer, and scour websites? Instead, many people have apps downloaded to their phones that they can open on the go to explore and research whatever they need. Major real estate websites like the aforementioned ones have these apps but there are plenty of local apps and government apps that are helpful to sellers and buyers as well, depending on the type of information they’re looking for. 

 

What makes listings stand out on phone apps, where screens are smaller and people swipe fast? You’ll want to make sure you’re including as many photos as possible, using a hi-res camera to take those photos, and making your listing’s language simple and easy to scan. 

 

Social Media

Think of how easy it is to look at a real estate listing and share it on your social media platform of choice in order to ask what your followers think or generate questions from the crowd. Social media has transformed the way we communicate and that includes real estate. People often share their real estate experiences, good and bad, on social media, which in turn generates discussions and provides real estate professionals with the chance to answer questions and provide solutions. 

 

According to Compass, 93 percent of social media traffic generated by realtor websites comes from Facebook, lest there be any question about the most powerful social media platform for real estate. But Instagram also provides a lot of opportunities for eye-popping photos and stunning furnishings that stand out. Buyers, sellers, and real estate professionals can all use social media to flaunt their wares and find their next homes. 

 

SmartHome Technology

The technological advances are coming from inside the house as well. Buyers can get a sense of the technology inside the house when they arrive for a unique tour that’s guided by tablets and apps. These kinds of real estate experiences are becoming more common, where buyers are self-guided by tech that interacts with the house’s smart features and showcases all of the modern trappings they can expect if they decide to call it home. And if they’re interested, your real estate agent or representative is just a mouse click or tap of a button on the phone away. 

 

People are still going to want to interact with people, especially with such large amounts of money being exchanged. But the ease of the process that technology has fostered only makes it simpler and smoother for buyers and sellers to connect, even if they never actually connect in person.