By Robbie Briggs
President and CEO, Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s International Realty
With apologies to Bob Dylan, these real estate times, they are a-changin’.
I’ve been telling you these last few weeks about how our agents and our brokerage have been adapting at supersonic speed to the way homes are being shown in this new age. Just since March, we have launched briggsfreeman.com/tour, the one-stop place where you’ll find all of our residences and ranches that have video and/or virtual reality tours. We’ve also launched briggsfreeman.com/virtual, which outlines all of the ways we are showing and selling homes remotely. (Did you know that you can buy a new home without ever leaving your current one? Like I said, changing times.)
Now, we are putting a new twist on one of the oldest and most effective ways to show homes to a variety of interested parties: the open house. What’s the story? Live-streaming virtual open houses, hosted by our amazing agents via video. In real time, you get to walk through a house with our agents while they show the rooms, features and grounds. It’s really fun: It makes the house come alive on your screen and it’s got the same little thrill of live television, where anything can happen. (For me, that’s part of the charm.) With these virtual open houses, you not only get a great sense of the house, you also get a great sense of the agent, if you’ve never met him or her in person or on a video chat. Our agents add so much to any experience. They can really set a scene, not only explaining everything but really illuminating how you could live in a house — how to use its spaces, and so on. Come explore our next virtual open houses, at briggsfreeman.com/live.
Now, about safety: We follow every CDC protocol every time we go into a house, whether to photograph it, film it or show it. Our agents practice social distancing in every situation. In fact, another plus of these new virtual open houses is that they are ideal for sellers who may not have wanted to have a traditional open house, with visitors. We get it. We always have. This way, one 30-minute, live-streamed virtual open house could be seen by an infinite number of people at once — one of whom could be the buyer.
It’s a wild new world, in many ways. We keep forging ahead, for our clients and our agents. We learn every day. I’m not just glad you’re along for a virtual open house — I’m glad you’re along for the ride.
