For many people, purchasing a home is a huge life event. Buyers want to feel confident about investing their money in a property with long-term potential, and it’s your job as their real estate agent to lead them to the perfect home.
But before you can do that, you have to build trust; and building trust requires sharing data that will help your buyers make the best decision. By arming clients with facts upfront, you not only establish that trust, but you also facilitate and expedite the decision-making process for your clients, which leads to increased sales.
Read on for six ways agents can employ real estate data and studies to build a trust-based relationship and boost your sales.
1. Transparency through inspections
Pre-listing home inspections can bolster a homebuyer‘s confidence in purchasing a property. While they seem nothing short of necessary, many real estate agents and sellers avoid these inspections for fear of what they’ll find. There’s always a chance they’ll uncover problems they’ll have to disclose.
Regardless of risk, agents should never neglect this essential precautionary measure. Most homebuyers will conduct a home inspection on their own, and a real estate professional can compromise a negotiation if they haven’t. It’s always worth the cost.
2. Urgency through market trends
First-time buyers are often cautious as they search for a new home, taking their time to research affordable properties in their area of interest. Considering their median income is $75,000, they have to use their savings sparingly. This can sometimes cause them to double-think their decisions and delay a purchase.
Agents can leverage today’s housing market trends to create a sense of urgency for potential buyers. With the rising price of homes, growing interest rates and shrinking inventory, agents can use data as a powerful tool for persuasion.
3. Incentives through seasonal benefits
Every season has its advantages and disadvantages for sellers. They often find their properties get the most attention during spring, as temperatures warm and the sunny weather makes the moving process simple and easy. Real estate agents can capitalize on this as they communicate with potential homebuyers.
They should make a point to mention seasonal benefits when negotiating a sale. They could advise parents to purchase and settle before the school year begins or inform them of how they can maximize their tax deductions if they buy early in the year.
4. Relevance through area data
The area surrounding a home is often just as important as the home itself. As buyers search for a property, they look for a vibrant local culture, diverse restaurants, coffee shops and stores. Different features appeal to different demographics, and area data can prove useful for resourceful agents.
As they study an area, an agent should make a list of sites of interest that might appeal to potential homebuyers. If they’re speaking with a millennial couple, they could touch on the region’s art and music scene, and if they’re speaking with parents, they could talk about the nearby school.
5. Security through risk assessment
A property can appear perfect and pristine on the outside, but it might hide issues that could result in unexpected costs for the homebuyer. Agents can ensure the homebuyer is safe in their purchase through a risk assessment study applied to identify any conditions that might lead to later difficulties.
In dealing with older homes, structural integrity is always a concern. Improved transparency can sway otherwise hesitant homebuyers into making an investment, as long as the agent has information about a property’s status. Risk assessment and other property studies allow for this accountability and a broad spectrum of similar benefits.
6. Differentiation through property research
Real estate agents need to research a property to determine how they should approach a sale. They’re far more likely to convince a potential buyer if they understand the strengths of a home and the characteristics that make it attractive and differentiate it from other properties in the area.
More than basic information like the number of bedrooms or square footage, agents should study the building materials that comprise a home, its resistance to inclement weather conditions and any subtle traits that might stir a buyer’s interest.
Through property and real estate studies, agents have access to the information they need to boost sales. The data they gather is essential during their negotiations. Without it, convincing a potential buyer to purchase a property is far more difficult.
As long as real estate agents build on a foundation of research, they’ll meet and exceed their goals.
Kayla Matthews covers smart technology and future trends for websites like VentureBeat, Curbed and Motherboard. You can read more posts by Kayla on her personal tech blog: Productivity Bytes.
