Courtesy of Michael Worthington of BrightDoor
Raleigh, NC – The house-hunting process is a huge step to take for a person, and, for real estate agents, it’s a great opportunity to help new clients find the home of their dreams. House hunting can be a rather difficult process, so we knew we wanted to create an app that would help both buyers and agents have an easier and more positive experience overall.
HomeRover is a free and low-cost app that allows people to host or participate in live home tour videos in real-time. We believe this app is going to change the way people look for and purchase homes. And, so far, we’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback.
When we debuted the app, one of the most-asked questions we received was:
“How is HomeRover different from solutions like FaceTime or Pre-Built Virtual Tours?”
It’s a fair question, and it’s one we’d like to answer in-depth. HomeRover is different to, and more advanced than, generic video apps and staged virtual tours because it puts the end-users at the forefront of its capabilities. It takes the best parts of both of these tools and makes them better to provide our users with benefits that aren’t seen with the current methods.
Let’s go into major pitfalls of both tools and how HomeRover works to improve upon them.
Generic Video Apps
Video apps, like FaceTime and Skype, revolutionized the way people are able to interact with each other. They make the world a closer and more connected place to live. They can go beyond a phone call to mimic a face-to-face interaction, which is great for everyday conversations.
When thinking about how they function in regards to remote home tours, however, that’s where they miss the mark. While they are able to show a home’s features, the apps aren’t designed for touring houses. So, there aren’t ways for the participant and host to search for home listings, schedule appointments, or find new lead opportunities. Along with that, after the tour, there’s not a way to view or share what was seen, which can be frustrating.
Video apps rely on instant communication and gratification, which isn’t always the best course action, specifically in terms of remote house hunting. This process needs to be more refined, and have more capabilities that cater to the end user’s needs of seeing if they could potentially buy or rent a home they’ve never seen before.
Staged Listing Tours
If you’ve ever listed or looked for a home, you’ve likely encountered a pre-built virtual tour of a listing. These were originally built to help the buyer to see the property without having to physically go there, but they’re not always effective.
First, these types of virtual tours can’t be customized to every buyer, which can make house-hunting difficult for people looking for specific features that could make or break a sale. Along those same lines, it can be difficult to navigate through these types of tours because they are either a pre-recorded video or a series of photos that don’t show an entire room.
These issues can really discourage a house hunter from moving forward with a home, or it can make a listing’s online persona look much more impressive than it is. It’s important to show an authentic and real perspective of each property, so there aren’t any surprises. House hunters are looking to save time wherever they can throughout the home-buying process, and because pre-built tours can’t answer every question or completely validate a buyer’s interest in a property, they often end up wasting everyone’s time.
HomeRover
Our team saw the shortcomings that are associated with generic video apps and staged listing tours and knew that there needed to be a better way for house hunters and real estate agents to come together and look for homes.
We developed the app to connect house hunters and agents so they can go through live, real-time tours that show the ins and outs of properties fully and authentically. We also wanted to make this as easy as possible for both house hunters and agents to use, so we packed it with functionality that allows them to search for homes, schedule and plan tours, and load in specific must-haves of a home. The best part is that with every completed tour, the video is saved to the cloud for viewing and sharing with others.
HomeRover is the new way of finding real estate, and we’d love for you to give it a try. It’s available now to download for free from the Apple App Store and Google Play. Discover the HomeRover difference today!