As an extremely fast-paced industry real estate is ideally designed for the adoption of enterprise apps.
Real estate agents are facing increased pressures to make sales as quickly as possible; at the same time they are also experiencing stronger and stronger competition, which means that their customer experience and their ability to build trust with clients must be top notch.
Apps are the perfect solutions in both these areas because of their ability to increase efficiency and to enable agents to sell to their clients in increasingly engaging ways, such as through iPads and tablets.
As real estate agents continue embracing mobile technology and even creating specific mobile apps to help them do business, it will be important for those who are still not using apps to step up and embrace the benefits of enterprise apps for real estate.
In this article we make it as easy as possible for you to do so by outlining the main benefits of apps for real estate agents and giving you ideas about the kind of apps you could be adopting.
Real estate apps have many benefits, including:
Increased productivity. Mobile apps can make communication and access to information much faster and more convenient by allowing you to use your mobile device no matter where you are. This saved time can help you generate additional revenue.
Higher engagement. Mobile apps can also help you make the sales process much more interactive for your clients, giving them the “wow” effect that may just make your sale and help you stand out from competitors.
Improved communications. Apps also make communications with clients much faster, ensuring that you are available to them whenever they have burning questions and thereby providing them with an optimal customer experience that they will not forget.
Some real estate app ideas
1. Property information
Showing property information to prospects in an engaging and visually attractive way can be critical in securing them as clients and can constitute a true differentiator from your competitors.
The app could include basic information such as home dimensions, price and floor plans, but the medium of mobile devices offers the opportunity to include additional features that are highly engaging.
An example of this is interactive 360° pictures that enable you to explore the different rooms in the house from every angle, allowing you to navigate the property without actually being there.
Another possible feature is digital floor plans that can be clicked on in order to find out more information about each room and to easily move between floors.
Allowing prospects to use these features while at a meeting can give them the “wow” effect that you need to win them over.
2. Area Information
Information about the area is a very important element that potential buyers always take into consideration. Unfortunately, however, this can sometimes be neglected by real estate agents, who normally choose to focus on the properties exclusively.
Considering the importance of area considerations for buyers, devoting an app exclusively to this can give you a boost in credibility in their eyes and also delight your customers by reducing the need for them to carry out their own research.
Information about the area could include demographic data such as average resident age and most common political leanings, weather data such as average temperature and precipitation and local data such as available transportation and popular local businesses and attractions.
3. Home buying & renting information
Buying or renting a house is often a difficult process that involves a lot of paperwork filing and research.
Making this as easy as possible for your prospects and thereby helping them make the right choices are great ways of providing them with a positive customer experience that they will not forget.
An app can help you do this by including basic information about the buying and renting process that answers all their burning questions and makes the experience as smooth as possible.
You could provide this app to your customers as an additional service for them to consult in their own time or you could use it during meetings to better show them how the process works.
The app could also include a communications channel between you and your clients so that they can easily get in touch if they have any questions.
4. Lead generation
Generating leads is an important part of the property selling or lending process and if you want to be proactive in engaging with prospects, apps can help you too.
A form feature in your property listings app can help you generate leads by requiring users to complete personal information when enquiring about a property. This data can be stored in your CRM system and it can even be used to build buyer profiles and optimize your sales initiatives.
Users could also be asked to provide personal information simply by having to sign up in order to access the app. You could then use tracking software such as Google Analytics to see how users are engaging with your app and approaching those who score highly as leads.
5. Calculators
Mortgage calculator
Most property sales come with a mortgage and these considerations can significantly slow down the process due to the complex nature of mortgage calculations.
In order to avoid wasting time or losing momentum with a client, having a mortgage calculator app handy can instantly give you an idea of how much the client will need to pay according to a variety of parameters.
Repair estimates
Likewise, acquiring a property may come with additional costs such as repairs and this can slow down the process as it is difficult to come up with cost estimates within the space of a meeting.
Again, a calculator app could help here by allowing you to quickly calculate how much total repairs will cost according to a set of benchmarks.
Both of these types of calculations could be easily exported into a report and emailed to clients for their ease.
6. Document library
Selling or lending a property involves going through a wide range of documents and it is often a challenge to ensure that all paper documents are readily available at a moment’s notice.
An app could help you centralize all the necessary documents in one place and categorise them according to client, so that accessing them becomes as easy as making a few taps. This can make it easy to show clients documents during a meeting using a tablet.
Sign documents electronically
Clients could even be asked to sign documents directly on the tablet using e-verified signature systems, eliminating the additional hassle of scanning and/or logging documents. These can then be easily sent to clients or printed on the spot.
7. Paperwork submission
Finally, one of the greatest challenges that real estate agents face in their daily work is submitting paperwork on time, for example when sending offers to sellers’ agents on behalf of a client. This can mean that other buyers will snatch the properties before you even have the chance to make your offer.
Often these challenges are as a consequence of the complexity of having to create a document, print it, sign it, scan it and then email it back to the seller’s agent. An app can solve this problem by allowing you to create, sign and send documents directly on your mobile device, reducing time-consumption dramatically.
In conclusion
As we have outlined in this article, there are many ways in which you can use mobile apps to increase your productivity, sell and let more properties and stand out from your competitors.
As the real estate industry continues to become technologically savvy and open to new developments in mobile technology, we can expect many more innovative types of apps to appear in the market.
Are there any apps for real estate agents that you have come across which we forgot to mention? Please let us know in the comments section.
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