Decades ago, home buyers combed the Sunday newspaper to find houses for sale. They hopped in their car for a “Sunday drive” around neighborhoods they liked, keeping their eyes peeled for For Sale signs or better yet, an open house.
Today, buyers use web searches and mobile apps to search hundreds of thousands of properties for sale. They can zero in on neighborhoods they like to find potential listings and “walk inside” home with virtual tours that give buyers almost a first-hand feel of what the listing is like.
With more choice and properties to search through, the home search can become a complicated and labor-intensive process. In fact, according to the 2018 Home Buyers and Sellers Generational Trends Report from the National Association of Realtors, home buyers typically searched for 10 weeks and personally toured an average of 10 homes during the home search process.
But now, Owners.com, a tech-driven real estate brokerage dedicated to making the real estate process simpler for buyers and sellers, is changing the game by blending smart digital tools with a personal touch. Owners.com recently launched a new customer experience, offering proprietary property ranking and tour management technology to simplify the home search, save time, and help buyers navigate listings more effectively through a highly-personalized search. Plus, they can now easily schedule and keep track of home tours online with notes.
“Shopping for homes has historically been a tedious and sometimes overwhelming task — buyers spend an enormous amount of time sifting through hundreds of properties, manually scheduling multiple showings, and then trying to remember the key details of each property after the showing,” says Dario Cardile, Vice President, Growth at Owners.com. “Owners.com is focused on creating a complete real estate solution that removes stress from their journey, and anticipates and fulfills their needs. We support our customers with a unique blend of the best digital tools and expert local agents to help them make the most informed decisions.”
With technology and seamless access to home search data, the key features of the new Owners.com experience include:
PROPERTY PREFERENCES-BASED MATCH
This tool provides buyers with the ability to navigate more effectively through property listings by scoring the listings according to their match with the buyers’ preferences, and ranking them accordingly in the buyers’ search results. Home buyers can indicate how important different property and location attributes are for them, ranging from common features such as the number of bedrooms or bathrooms to more niche attributes such as a garden or double garage.
PROPERTY TOUR MANAGER
Take out the scheduling middle man. Owners.com offers the ability to schedule multiple property tours directly online or via mobile. This makes it easier for home buyers to quickly visit the homes they are interested in and increase the chances they will be the first to see the home. The tour manager tool helps save time by allowing more efficient communication with the agent and scheduling of multiple visits with a few clicks.
PROPERTY TOUR REPORT
Keep all your notes and property stats in one easy place. Owners.com agents provide buyers with a property tour report to the customer after each showing to help home buyers make the best-informed decisions and make sense of their options. The tour report features pictures and property description, home details, neighborhood information, and notes taken during the viewing.
“Owners.com is now making this entire experience far easier, by personalizing the search process and introducing tools to manage showings and tour observations,” said Cardile. “In today’s fast-moving and competitive market, the new Owners.com experience helps buyers save time and make better-informed decisions, increasing their chances of getting into the right home and at the best possible price.”
