Co-Founder and principal of The Eighty Two Group @ Compass
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Gone are the days of freshly baked (or store-bought, no judgments) cookies in packed open houses — at least, for now. Because of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, many of the traditional ways of buying and selling a home have gone out the window. However, this does not mean that you have to wait until the pandemic is over to sell. With today’s technology, you should still be able to effectively market your home and, surprisingly, do so much more easily than before.
Virtual Tours
Virtual tours from companies such as Matterport have been around for years. However, they were largely unappreciated by both buyers and sellers. Sellers did not want to spend the extra money to pay for the service because buyers did not find much value in it. Today, with no physical open houses and very limited showings, buyers may have no choice but to submit an offer without first seeing the property in person. Luckily, virtual tours are available to everybody at any time.
Your home will not work for every buyer out there. Another benefit to a virtual tour is that it helps weed out buyers who may not ultimately be interested in your home because of the layout or other reasons that are not evident in pictures. Virtual tours today have higher-quality images and a more user-friendly interface, making it a very important tool in marketing your home.
Private Video Tours
With FaceTime, Skype and many other programs like them, it is now possible for buyers to privately tour homes at their own convenience. Private video tours maintain the intimate feeling of seeing the home for buyers and allow them to see details that are not apparent in staged photos and virtual tours. Some sellers and agents are also now doing livestreamed open houses where they host a videoconference call and prospective buyers are free to join in.
Video tours reduce the number of visitors physically touring your home and may reduce exposure to the virus for your family, without limiting the number of prospective buyers who can see your home.
Digital Advertising
With more people working from home and going out less, Americans are spending more time online than before. This provides an incredible opportunity to ramp up digital advertising and get more views on your listing.
Many industries, unlike real estate, are not well equipped to transition to the digital world. Research has shown that the pandemic has led to reduced advertising expenditure. This means that there is less competition for advertising, and that every dollar spent on advertising today will go farther than they used to before.
Eye-Catching Photos And Descriptions
Research has shown that people today have shorter attention spans than before. With the amount of information that we are bombarded with on a daily basis, it is important that your listing has multiple things that make it pop. Professional photography will help make your home look bigger and brighter. Minor renovations such as painting your front door with a color that stands out will help make your listing be more memorable to buyers browsing through hundreds of homes online. Focus on keywords that buyers today may be looking for, such as “office space,” “back yard” or “outdoor space,” and add those to the description.
They say necessity is the mother of invention. Perhaps this is what ultimately forces the real estate industry to phase out a lot of its archaic processes and finally adapt to the 21st century with more effective and efficient ways of homebuying and selling. In today’s climate, it is more important than ever to find a real estate agent who can successfully leverage the technology at their disposal to sell your home.
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