Not long ago, searching for a new home meant jumping in the car with your real estate agent and driving through neighborhoods, looking at house after house until you found “the one.” While people still look at several houses before deciding which one is home, the chances are that they clicked from webpage to webpage to find it.
According to the National Association of Realtors, 89 percent of all homebuyers used online tools and resources in their home search. This means for home sellers that embracing new technology when working with an agent to advertise their property is no longer just a good idea, it’s a necessity.
Technology has changed nearly every aspect of the way we live, so it’s only natural that it affects the way sellers and their agents market and sell homes. Most potential buyers make their first impression of a home online, and with so much high-quality media online, the bar has been raised for online real estate listings to really “wow” buyers.
Here are a few high-tech resources and gadgets that can help you and your agent sell your home:
Social media: These days, nearly everyone is on at least one social media platform, whether it be Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest, so including a social media strategy in your home’s marketing plan is becoming par for the course. A well-placed post on Facebook or a properly timed Tweet can place your listing in front of hundreds, or possibly thousands, of potential buyers, and usually costs the seller nothing.
Virtual staging: If a seller has already moved out and left a home empty, visual effects software can let you fill the empty house with different styles of furniture, add art and light fixtures, or even change the wall color with the click of a mouse. This can help prospective buyers visualize a home’s potential and see what it would look like when it’s tailored to their taste. A seller can’t know what every buyer’s taste is, and this allows the home to be staged in any style at a fraction of the cost.
Drones: Unmanned aerial vehicles, more commonly known as drones, are aircrafts without a human pilot aboard, and can be used to take aerial photos of your home and the surrounding property. New drone technologies can help you and your agent to market your home in a way that might have been cost-prohibitive in the past. If your home has beautiful mountain views or sits on a large piece of property, drone photography can highlight these features. However, it’s important for sellers to remember that the FAA has not yet put rules for commercial drone use into place. Sellers should either hire a professional drone operator or an agent with a Federal Aviation Administration waiver. NAR expects the rules to be finalized this summer.
By using a few of these tools, you can make your home’s listing more appealing to buyers, and hopefully help sell it more quickly.
If you are interested in selling your home this summer, contact your Realtor to discuss the above ways to get your home sold.
The Greater Chattanooga Association of Realtors is “The Voice of Real Estate in Greater Chattanooga.” The Association is a regional organization with more than 1,500 members, and is one of more than 1,400 local boards and associations of Realtors nationwide that comprise the National Association of Realtors. The Greater Chattanooga Association of Realtors services Hamilton and Sequatchie counties in southeast Tennessee, and Catoosa, Dade, and Walker counties in northwest Georgia. For more information, visit www.gcar.net.