The Case For Technology Adoption By Real Estate Agencies

At $40 trillion, the U.S realty market is the biggest single entity and coincidentally, the most overly cited statistic when big numbers are needed. The real estate lending market is about $1.6 trillion annually. While technology has undoubtedly disrupted the consumer side of business, it has ways to go in the flip side of the business to justify the use of the word. How can agents leverage the technology?

The dynamics of the market are such that people still ask and get reliable information from agents because so many variables has to align for a single sale. Agents still use their guile, guts, and wits to make it happen. Almost every product currently in the market faces the customer and very limited products are available for an agent with the end goal of building relationships that gets them sales in the long run.

With the advent of mobile, personal technology seems to be the bridge for building relationships with potential customers. More people use the internet on their mobile devices than on their home connection (3.2 billion people to be specific) and statistics show users prefer mobile apps to mobile sites. It is clear that mobile is leading the way in connecting people for the next generation. Technology has opened the floodgates for business, particularly real estate, to build a personal relationship with customer like never before. To build the case for why real estate agencies must have their mobile app on the customers’ phones, here are some broad outputs that agents can leverage:

• Zip code or price specific push notifications for open houses and other marketing messages.
• Gamified, crowd-sourced mechanism to get referrals that are the main source of leads for agents
• Convincing early stage buyers to download the app to get the jump on all the latest in their preferred area and price.
• Automated social media posts about new listings at regular intervals
• Better client service
• Push notifications about a property’s potential value based on recent sale and zip code to educate clients on how to price their property
• Personalized sales pitches based on the customers app usage data
• Actionable data to improve own performance