Technology can improve real estate sales leads

This is an article we wrote for the Boston area's Mass High Tech: The Journal of New England Technology published on Friday November 23, 2007. http://masshightech.bizjournals.com/masshightech/stories/2007/11/26/focus2.html

Two years ago I was one of more than 26,000 people attending the Realtors Conference and Expo in San Francisco. Most attendees were residential resale agents and brokers, and I was overwhelmed by the number of technology vendors exhibiting. Each had something that would help them market and sell homes faster. By comparison, conferences for the related home furnishings market, in which my company operates, typically have only a couple dozen technology vendors. At these large home furnishings industry conventions, 80,000 people attend and few visit the technology exhibits.

I attended the 2005 Realtors Conference to research this sister industry, and was pleased particularly with the focus and value placed on technology. Since then the steep decline in the housing market has affected both industries, but in different ways. In home furnishings, technology has advanced slowly with few new technology providers entering the market. In real estate, the trend I've observed is that the leading brokers, builders and property marketers are responding proactively to the slower market conditions by looking for new ways to improve sales lead generation and customer service. With over 77 percent of prospective home buyers starting their shopping online, according to the National Association of Realtors' most recent home buyers and sellers survey, utilizing new technology tools to attract and qualify these buyers is a logical step.

Online sales lead generation was a well-established practice during my first visit to the Realtor conference in 2005. Companies like Reply! Inc. and LendingTree LLC were masters at capturing potential home buyers online and validating and forwarding their contact information to agents and mortgage providers, who would purchase these leads of various qualifying levels. The more qualified the lead, the higher the price. However, the technology tools for sufficiently screening or qualifying an online lead were lacking. Despite the large lead volume, agents experienced a low success rate of converting the lead to a home purchase.

Although the home furnishing industry overall is behind real estate in adoption of technology, those furnishings retailers who actively engage the client online -- enough so the client registers his or her information -- are seeing a high lead-to-sales conversion rate. These retailers are employing new technology tools to help the prospect easily browse online and quickly hone their search. This service delivers a high perceived value to the clients -- saving them time and money -- and has the effect of delivering a highly qualified lead to the merchant.

This success is starting to be duplicated in the real estate industry. One way of further engaging a prospective home buyer is by providing interactive floorplans for properties marketed online. Once a prospect gets past the budget and neighborhood considerations when shopping for a residence, the next question is typically, "Will my furniture fit?" Interactive floor plans help engage the buyer more deeply in the property by allowing them to design the interior of the property to determine if it fits their living needs. Those that save these floor plans have to register and this demonstrates a keen interest in a particular property.

At a time when there are far fewer buyers than there are properties, anything that generates a lead is valuable, and there's a lot of real estate technology that can do this. A volume of leads that doesn't contain a buyer is only a waste of valuable time and money. The real estate market is realizing this and is awarding business to those technologies that produce buyers. Those who don't will find themselves in trouble when the market rebounds, which hopefully is sooner rather than later.

Steve Street is the founder and CEO of Londonderry, N.H.-based online interior design company Icovia. Steve can be reached at steve.street@icovia.com.

Comments

[Brina]

People should read this.

[deshu]

This article brings hopes on sales and Lead Generators.Thanks for that.

We have LEADGENER8's team which is comprised of senior professionals that have extensive experience in dealing with Corporate decision makers.

[Gainesville Realty]

I think more and more agencies are catching onto internet marketing, mostly because they have more time on their hands to think of ways to market their company due to the lack of sales. Not only is the internet the future, it's much cheaper to advertise on and you can track your results easier. Still, it's pretty amazing how many companies on a local and national level are behind the curve when it comes to online advertising.