Selling your home is hard. The housing market is very competitive and even more consumer-driven than it used to be. House hunters are relying on real estate agents less and less and instead of turning towards apps and other tech tools like listing websites and search engines (read more here) to find their future dream home. In fact, a whopping 89% of potential home buyers are using online tools these days.
If you’re selling your home, you need to know how to leverage apps and other technology designed to help you successfully make a sale on your old home. These tech-based tools are pivotal to giving you the edge on the real estate market to stand above the thousands of other private real estate listings.
Invest in a Great Camera
With many home buyers shopping on websites and through apps, the majority of people interested in your home aren’t going to walk the property in person. Thus, they are going to rely on the pictures that accompany your online postings. If a listing has weak images that are low-quality or poorly framed, viewers are going to skip to the next listing quickly. Pictures are the face of new real estate listings, and you need to make sure that they are high-quality and professionally shot.
It may cost a couple of hundred dollars, but it is a wise investment to buy/rent a high-quality camera or even higher a professional real estate photographer. They’ll have all of the camera and lighting equipment and know exactly how to take photos to showcase the best elements of your home. Video can also be a powerful tool, especially if you can create an interactive video tour for home browsers to check out.
Divide and Conquer Listing Services
There are tons of different online real estate listing services: Realtor.com, Zillow, Remax, Century 21, Trulia, Homefinder.com, RealtyTrac, Homes & Land, Craigslist. Plus, social media platforms like Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and Instagram can all be used as other avenues to get the word out about your real estate for sale. Home buyers don’t rely on just one of these services, but typically use multiple different services, which means you want your listing on as many sites as possible.
Zillow, Trulia, and Realtor.com are excellent starting points because they share listing with other, smaller real estate sites. They also allow you to see various stats associated with your listing about who’s looking and from where, which can help you better target the type of buyers most interested in your style or kind of home.
These major real estate listing sites also have great mobile apps, which is an increasingly popular way for people to look at homes. Zillow sees 600 million home views on mobile each month, which translates to about 223 homes per second. Luckily, these services automatically place their online listings on their mobile apps as well, so the user has very little extra work to do. That said, the increase in mobile usage is something you want to keep in mind, especially with the images you use and how they look on a smaller screen.
Create An Interest Map To Showcase Neighborhood Highlights
When people shop for a new home, the surrounding neighborhood is just as important to them as the house itself. With more and more people shopping online for new homes, it can be hard to effectively showcase the surrounding neighborhood and what’s available, especially since they aren’t physically touring the area in person.
As a solution, a lot of people include a map with their home listings. An interesting map shows not only the GPS location of the property but also significant sites and points of interest nearby. This allows potential buyers to see where the closest schools are, how far they have to travel for groceries, if there’s a coffee shop on their way to work, etc.
Google Maps makes creating an interesting map very easy, and many major real estate sites feature a plugin that will integrate the map right into your listing.
Tech Tools Inside Your Home Are Great Selling Points
Real estate listings aren’t the only things getting smarter; so are the homes themselves. In other words, the technology you can use to sell your home isn’t all about making better listings but also making a better home. Smart home technology is a big seller and can turn a seemingly dated home into a modern marvel.
You can find smart home gadgets at any major electronics store or online, such as Bluetooth speakers that allow you to change the music in any room wirelessly or an app-powered thermostat that can adjust the temperature remotely, even when you aren’t at home.
These smart home systems can cost a few hundred dollars, even thousands, depending on the brand and scope of your smart home renovations, but the investment can make your home seem luxurious and energy efficient, especially if someone is moving from an older home without these modern gadgets.
Conclusions
These tech tools will help enhance your home listings and make it easier to sell a home for the price you want and deserve. These tips can be especially impactful if you’ve had a lot of trouble selling your home in the past or if you need to sell quickly and painlessly. Buying or selling a home is stressful, but technology makes it much more bearable. You might even have some fun using some of these modern real estate tools!
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