Blog Post: Top Tech Tools To Market Your Home

If you're thinking about selling your home, you may be wondering how technology has changed the process over the years. It’s definitely NOT your Grandma's real estate market! So what are some of the top tech tools being used today to sell homes?

IVR (Interactive Voice Response) Systems

On each home marketed by The Belt Team, we install a special rider on the sign so that anyone who is interested can call and get information 24 hours a day. They can hear a recording and get a fax about our properties any time of the day or night. Yes, all of our info is easily found on all sorts of web sites, but when you're driving by — it's a lot easier to just call. You’d be surprised how many people call as early as 5 a.m. or as late as midnight.

The good news for our sellers is that our system captures the caller's number via caller id. Since the technology includes an 800 number, we are able to caller id every caller. Within seconds of a call, we receive an email notification with the caller’s message (if one was left) and their phone number. And one of the Realtors on our team follows up with a return call to make sure the caller got all the info they need. No page left unturned, so to speak.

SOCIAL MEDIA

GChat, Hangout, Facebook, IM, Twitter, Skype, Texting, You Tube, LocalMinds, FourSquare, Video Tours, Blogging, Circles, etc, etc, etc. These are terms you may or may not be familiar with. 

Some things in real estate haven’t changed much since your Grandma bought and sold her house, but the way we communicate has definitely changed. Today’s buyers and sellers want to be communicated with in very particular ways — and no two consumers are the same. So when selling your home, make sure you're on top of that communication path. If none of these terms mean anything to you — that's OK. Your Realtor should handle the technology for you. And if you already know what hangouts and circles are — great. You know exactly what we're talking about!

Today’s market requires creativity and a need to be on the leading edge of technology — including Twitter, You Tube channels, Facebook blogs. You get the picture. You shouldn't wait for buyers to come to you; be proactive and reach out to draw them in.

Back in the '50s and '60s there used to be TV shows about "the future." (My favorite was The Jetsons!) But boy, would your Grandma have been surprised back then to see what we can do now.

Imagine this scenario:

You're selling your home. You take the kids to the Outer Banks for a week so your house will actually stay clean. Your spouse is on travel in South America for business. Your in-laws co-signed when you bought the house, so they have an interest as well. And your Realtor is here in Vienna.

A contract comes in on your house. Now what? Your Realtor emails the contract to everyone. You’re on vacation, so you pull it up on your smart phone. Your spouse travels with an ipad, so he pulls it up there. And your in-laws have an old-fashioned desktop and check their email as well.

Your Realtor sets up a "hangout" on Google Plus (or conferences everyone in on Skype — you know the thing you set up so the grandparents could "see" the kids!) and all five of you go over the contract and discuss your options. Then your Realtor sends out the document via DocUSign so each party can sign electronically and no time is wasted in ratifying a contract.

Back to your regularly scheduled vacation.

With today's technology, we have actually even sold several homes where the Buyer never even stepped foot in the home until AFTER they owned it.

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