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DOLLHOUSE VIEW: Prospective buyers can tour this home in Battlefield listed on Team 24/7 Realtors’ website.
DOLLHOUSE VIEW: Prospective buyers can tour this home in Battlefield listed on Team 24/7 Realtors’ website.

Open House of Tomorrow: Realtors embrace new technology

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Millennials have grown up buying and selling everything online. From shoes to stock and home electronics to eyewear, online shoppers can outfit their portfolio, their wardrobe and their home with the click of a button.

Now, thanks to technological advances in the real estate industry, shoppers also can buy their home.

“I’ve sold a few to out-of-town buyers who never even looked at the house in real life,” said Joel Gaisford, a real estate agent with Team 24/7 Realtors, a Murney Associates, Realtors group.

Using 3-D interactive tours, Team 24/7 gives potential buyers a complete walk-through. Think Google street view, but inside a house.

“Millennials are very tech savvy,” Gaisford said. “There is so much information at their fingertips, and buyers are getting smarter in their search for homes.”

Using technology from Sunnyvale, California-based startup Matterport, Gaisford said the 3-D mapping process is relatively simple, but time consuming. What took 45 minutes with a digital camera now takes upwards of two hours to create a 3-D rendering.

“It’s worth it,” he said. “The response from people is that they are blown away with the rendering. It’s the coolest thing they’ve ever seen.”

Utilizing a large camera on a tripod and the Matterport app on an iPad, the agent places the camera around the house in 8- to 10-foot intervals. At each stop the camera takes multiple photos in every direction while the agent marks features such as windows and mirrors on the iPad layout.

Gaisford said once all data is collected, it’s uploaded to Matterport and in a few hours the immersive media company sends back a rendering known as a dollhouse view – so named because the 3-D image looks like a child’s dollhouse.

Gaisford declined to provide startup costs for the equipment and software, but he said Team 24/7 pays Matterport a monthly fee of roughly $100 to host the models and provide up to seven renderings. The Murney agents offer the service to all clients at no extra charge.

“Not everyone does it,” Gaisford said. “Some people think it’s only for high-end houses, but that’s not the case at all.”

Instant gratification
Team 24/7 is one of only a handful of agents using 3-D tech in southwest Missouri. Smartphone apps, however, are another story.

“Newspapers aren’t real-time data anymore,” said Jessica Hickok, executive of the Greater Springfield Board of Realtors. “People want instant gratification. They want the latest details, and they want them now.”

Even if they don’t purchase online, Gaisford said the majority of his buyers start their search online. According to the National Association of Realtors 2015 profile of home buyers, roughly 44 percent start their search online before ever contacting an agent.

“I’d wager about 80 percent of people I see have a specific house in mind already when they come see me,” said Wally Nattinger, a Keller Williams of Greater Springfield real estate agent.

The prevalence of technology not only is changing the way people buy houses, but also the way agents sell them. Buyers who find a house via newspaper or print ads have fallen from the majority to just 1 percent last year.

The 2016 NAR member profile found 27 percent of agents and 21 percent of brokers spent between $501 and $2,000 on technology in the last 12 months and a over 90 percent use social media in some form to sell homes.

“Being early adopters of new technologies sets us apart from our competition,” said Gaisford. “Agents who have been resistant to it are being left in the dust.”

Hugely popular real estate finder app Zillow claims more than 24 million users and at least 50 million homes viewed so far. Allowing users to search an area, see listings, photos and estimated mortgage payments, local real estate agents say it’s often the first place their clients start. Pulling data from publicly available information nationwide, the Zillow app has its critics who say accuracy is questionable.

“Since Missouri is a nondisclosure state, that information can’t be accurate,” Hickok said, noting the app would work better in other states.

Nattinger has a solution. He uses his own app. Provided by the agency for each real estate agent, Nattinger said the personalized app is more accurate than Zillow.

“It pulls information directly from the local MLS every 10 or 15 minutes,” he said.
 
In addition to all his contact information, the app also features a Homekeeper link to ease the transition. Through Homekeeper, customers can take a photo of any appliance model number or serial number and Homekeeper will upload the user manual and store it on the app. Homekeeper also stores Nattinger’s personal recommendations for services such as plumbing, yard work and home repairs.

“It’s an added value for them years down the road,” he said. “They can pull that up and know this is somebody I’ve used and trust.”

What’s the next tech?
Currently a seller’s market – defined as less than 6 months of inventory – Hickok said Greene County was at 3.84 months of inventory as of August.

Low interest rates and a stabilized economy add to the frenzy to buy, she said. The next tech trends she’s seeing to help find that house in a decreasing market are personal portals.

“An agent can create a portal to find any house,” she said. “Say you want three bedrooms, two baths, with a back porch. A personalized portal can show you every house that fits so you don’t have to wade through things you don’t want.”

Once found, Nattinger said real estate transaction management software Dotloop can help facilitate the home buying process.

“It allows you to sign electronically,” he said. “You can close on your house from the beach while on vacation.”

Nattinger said not all clients are comfortable with it yet, but it’s poised to become mainstream, and, once again, change the way he does business.

“You’ve got to stay on the edge of technology to be relevant,” Nattinger said.

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