The current global situation has been a significant disruptive force for most businesses. Real estate, however, continues to attract capital investment.
Having established that, the market is still a little complicated.
Let’s put it this way: Individual homeowners aren’t excited about selling their property and want to hold out owing to the pandemic. It has led to an ambiguous situation.
Due to a low inventory of existing houses for sale, the market is turning towards building contractors to cater to potential home-buyers. Thus, multi-family property units, i.e., apartments, are seeing a rise in sales. The same goes for industrial rental properties.
Source: The Motley Fool
Recent technological developments also have much to do with why such properties sell better than others.
Amid such a fluctuating market, how can real estate and mortgage brokers leverage this situation to elevate their own business? Well, the first step to answering that would be examining some emerging trends in the real estate industry.
Table of Contents
What are Some Emerging Trends in Real Estate?
Source: Forbes
In terms of marketing, the global real estate outlook has changed profoundly in the last three years To put it simply, it’s all going digital.
To elaborate, the following are some of the more prominent real estate technology trends.
 1. AI is Helping to Simplify the Buying and Selling Process
Concepts such as AI and Machine Learning are not used synonymously with a sector like real estate. However, that’s just what’s happening at the moment.
The pandemic made a lot of people comfortable with the idea of online shopping. A significant portion of those people found buying and selling homes quite simple. Data suggests that around 95% of buyers use online search tools to discover options when purchasing a home.
AI algorithms allow property listing sites to solve many of their primary concerns. The benefits they provide are threefold:
- Properties are suggested based on prior user search behavior.
- Real, interested buyers are highlighted and separated from ‘window-shoppers.’
- Market and demographic data can estimate current and future property value.
 2. Cloud-Based Services are Redefining Customer Management
Source: G2
One of the emerging trends in real estate is the growing popularity of cloud services. Cloud services, essentially, store data on a server instead of a local system, and that data can be shared at any given time by anyone.
RapidScale, a cloud service provider, establishes that 80% of the prominent real estate companies are operating on cloud technology in one way or another.
Cloud services are thus helping redefine customer management for real estate companies.
Moreover, these cloud-based services allow real estate agents and companies to do the following:
- Quickly transfer the buyer’s or seller’s information into their databases.
- Efficiently respond to client queries by cross-referencing easily accessible online data.
- Securely store a client’s legal documentation online.
 3. Virtual House Tours are Helping People Make Faster Decisions
One of the most ingenious real estate marketing ideas rising to prominence over the last couple of years is the concept of virtual tours.
It seems strange to buy a house without ever physically visiting the location. However, you have been managing working online fine so far. So, why can’t buyers decide on the right home for them with a virtual tour?
In a virtual tour, the agent usually walks around the property and provides details at the end. It also has some significant advantages, such as:
- It is time-efficient and doesn’t disrupt the client’s schedule.
- It allows access to a more extensive client base without having multiple showings.
- It helps lead conversion by requiring a client to share contact details.
All the information mentioned above is reasonable, of course. However, it’s best to comprehensively understand how to incorporate these real estate trends and forecasts into your marketing techniques.
How Do You Incorporate These Trends into Your Marketing Strategies?
Source: LYFE Marketing
The manner in which technological developments have affected the global real estate outlook has already been established. Now, examining how you can leverage these trends in your real estate marketing ideas is critical.
 1. Build a High-Quality Website
With an increasing number of people looking for houses online, having an attractive and optimized website and mobile app is crucial.
A good website does the following:
- Uses local SEO to help display the relevant property listings to potential clients.
- Effectively converts leads through helpful featured content.
- Establishes regular communication with your clients through feedback surveys and forums.
- Relays your brand image and increases its visibility
 2. Launch a Consolidated Data Network
Source: Cisco
With how fast cryptocurrency has grown, it’s time you consider it highly relevant to the real estate sector. It will be a missed opportunity if you don’t.
Besides, as more organizations and marketers look toward marketing automation for shaping their marketing strategies, it’s paramount to build a consolidated data network. Allowing your clients to access a decentralized network would not only bolster your marketing efforts but also render the following benefits:
- Transparent and dedicated property data are made available in one place.
- Payment options have become more expansive and secure.
- Access to a broader and more tech-savvy client base which, in turn, allows you to widen your market.
 3. Offer to Host Premier Virtual Tours
How you go about hosting a virtual tour is a question that demands immediate attention. Offering a virtual tour to some of your less attractive property portfolios is not wise.
Consider, for instance, the basic premise of a tour. It’s to show why the property is right for your client.
A real estate agent could wave over some client concerns in a physical tour. However, once clients see something they don’t like in a virtual tour, they probably won’t be back to your site.
Why would they? They are plenty of other sites offering hassle-free virtual tours.
So, in the digital age, you have only one chance to make an impression. Ensure the image you create is the right one.
Wrapping Up
Leveraging the emerging trends in real estate depends entirely on personal creativity. If you are a real estate firm looking to host an array of properties via virtual tour, you may require qualified real estate agents who can close deals. With well-researched and compiled real estate industry email list, you can narrow down potential brokers that sign off lucrative contracts with the customers.
Technology and marketing go hand-in-hand; using them wisely expands your business and allows you to wade through the competition quickly. Elizabeth Mendenhall, the former National Association of Realtors (NAR) president, captures this perfectly. To quote:
If you have not made changes in your real estate business to ensure you have technical competency, you are way behind.
