Welcome to the Kleber & Associates blog! Here’s the latest on A New Way to Find Your Dream Home
If anything good has come from the recession and poor housing market, perhaps it is the marketing innovations in the housing market. As houses are harder and harder to sell, real estate companies have had to rethink the way they sell homes and connect with customers.
Enter Coldwell Banker and its new search tools. The real estate giant has taken advantage of web, social and mobile tools to better connect with potential buyers and sellers and create new ways to find a home. Here are a few of the innovative ways house hunting has been changed thanks to consumer-focused technology.
BlueScape asks users to rate a series of photos by selecting “thumbs up” or “thumbs down,” similar to the way Pandora allows users to rate a song. After rating the photos, including beach, urban, winter, and natural scenes, the search service returns a “cloud” of house listings all tailored to your personal likings.
The Lifestyle search allows you to rate the importance of various community amenities like good schools, mass transit, shopping, and the arts. After selecting a state or city, the search tool returns a variety of neighborhoods and communities that match your preferences on different levels. You can then view the listing of properties available in those neighborhoods.
The On Location video search integrates an interactive map into the Coldwell Banker YouTube channel allowing house hunters to search the map for the area they are interested in and view a video walk-through of select homes.
Coldwell Banker’s mobile website and apps allow potential buyers to search for property on the go. Consumers no longer have to research properties at home prior to an in-person tour. Thanks to mobile technology, house hunters can access house information when they are on location or driving by.
These new search tools are further evidence of the effect the Millennial generation has on the housing market. Millennials, the latest generation to come of age and enter the house hunt, are the new target market for first time home buyers. As more twenty and thirty-somethings move out of rental houses and think about starting families, understanding their behavior is key to the success of the real estate market. One key trend in the Millennial generation is their use of bandwidth. Millennials rely on digital information, social media and mobile technologies more than any prior generation. By integrating these technologies into an integrated marketing plan, companies in the home and building industry can more effectively connect with the newest generation of home owners.
