Digital transformation is an ongoing trend for every industry out there. Real estate is no exception.
However, earlier only buyers were using that digitalization: they were literally able to buy or rent a house via smartphone.
In turn, real estate agents and brokers were listing the property on those websites, but were pretty much tied to their work computer: they needed putting all the info correctly or fax the paperwork to get a signature.
New generation real estate software has altered the brokers’ reality as well. Real estate apps in 2021 cover different needs the representatives of the profession face during work: from creating landing pages on ad websites to signing up papers with e-signatures.
In this blog post, we’ll talk about the best software required for modern-day real estate businessperson, and will put an emphasis on virtual tour software as it is the biggest trend for the industry in 2021 and years to come.
Virtual Tour Software Benefits
There were plenty of factors that showed the benefits of virtual tours over the traditional ones for potential buyers.
Therefore, there is room for the adjustment that has to be made by real estate business owners.
Here are the numbers to back the use of Virtual Reality elements in the real estate business up:
More than half of potential real estate agency clients are trying to find their house or office place for purchase or rent via the Internet.
VR in the real estate market is expected to reach $2.6 billion value by 2025 (pre-COVID-19 forecast).
Millennials are the main real estate buyers at the moment with expected households of over 20M in the US by 2025. The representatives of this generation tend to have a good vibe towards VR.
In 41% of cases, VR technologies allow users to live out the experience of others. It means if you take a 3D walkthrough around a business center where you’re going to rent a space, you can feel its atmosphere by the look and feel it provides.
Today even the most conservative industry players are happy to have the innovation at their service.
With COVID-19, Virtual tours seem even more relevant now. Real estate is one of the most conservative and unwilling to change industries. But now the players are happy to embrace the innovations at their services.
Best Real Estate Virtual Tour Software Features
Property software allows creating the following VR effects. Basically, VR-tour special features enabled to your platform might attract additional customers and close questionable deals.
Business owners must pay attention to special features that can turn your virtual tour software might bring to the table:
Schemes of floor plans
By looking at them, the potential buyers (tenants) can understand the dimension and layout of the building, The plans give a quick and complete overview of an asset. Also, virtually any MVP version of the real estate software can cover this functionality.
Online listings with 2D floor plans are more likely to get more leads, conversions, sales.
3D presentations
Thanks to the detailed model with furniture and roundabout rotation, clients can view an asset from different angles. 3D presentations may include captivating videos and images of the place.
Finally, 3D virtual tours
Modern tools allow buyers or tenants to move around any space from any device.
Special VR equipment allows them to do all this in the VR mode and feel like they’re inside the building.
The real estate agent has to make sure the online tour contains hi-resolution images for creating a great customer experience.
Why do we emphasize virtual tour real estate software? It has become a real trend during the COVID-19 pandemics outbursts.
In addition that international clients are able to use the virtual excursion for fast examination
European or Asian home buyers now use virtual tours to look around offers in the US more often than they did before
For companies arranging open house campaigns, virtual tours are perfect for scaling and saving money for real open houses.
Since events are now forbidden due-to the safety reasons, the high-tech lets many clients test the waters and grasp the real look and feel of the property at a distance.
Other Types of Software Relevant to Real Estate Business
Obviously, there are so many more digital activities that could be covered by modern software. We’ll stop on documents signing software and marketing automation tools.
Signing Papers
Real estate deals don’t happen on paper all the time now. Some of the deals are sealed with eSignatures. Dootlop by Zillow is a great example of such software.
The software empowers real estate brokers, agents to edit forms, eSign, collaborate and automate compliance on a single, streamlined platform.
The platform possesses rich functionality. For each loaded document into it, one can add a note or « prepare » for signature by indicating the fields that need to be completed on the form.
Once the document is ready to be signed, it could directly to the necessary parties with a custom message.
The recipient can simply click the link in the email, clicks the fields assigned to them, and inserts their signature.
We only mentioned Dootloop to illustrate that this software allows eSignatures, but it possesses a rich functionality. Some of the functions could be omitted in the development of your custom real estate software. The others need to be added to fully cover the needs.
Email Automation
E-mailing your new potential clients just has to be automated for better coverage and targeting. The best solutions for that are real estate CRM software products.
Even if your agency is relatively small, you probably can afford a simple solution that can be, once set up, be run by itself with the scheduled periodicity.
Creating campaigns in a software product like Wise Agent allows for creating marketing e-mail campaigns.
You can customize the order of emails in the series. Such software provides the user with the chance to change the subject line, message body, image, and branding.
Real estate CRM is a popular type of custom software developed by Elinext. Simple versions with great UI design would allow real estate marketers to divide e-mail workflow into different steps, so you don’t feel overwhelmed by all the details.
Extra functions like integrations with popular email tools (i.e. Zapier) allow fast lead importing at extra cost for functionality development.
Summary
A single app is no longer capable of covering your real estate needs. Careful selection of digital tools to get you through processes that take place in your real estate business is just what you need.
In many cases, a customs software solution that covers your specific need is the key to the improvement of your agency’s marketing, lead generation, closing deals percentage, or signing documents in time.
Elinext is a company that has experience in delivering high-quality real estate products that help businesses worldwide. Contact us to receive a free quote.
