The pandemic reshaped how homebuying happens, forcing both customers and sales agents to utilize technology in multiple new ways to make sales happen. That forced creativity wasn’t temporary; Industry expert Mikael Hastrup points out that even though people are now interacting in person again, many of the tools that really came into fruition during COVID have found a solid home in modern homebuying today.
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Advanced Searching
The fact that people were cooped up at home and couldn’t get out in person caused them to create a groundswell of demand for faster, better, and more robust real estate research online. The result Mikael Hastrup saw was technology that advanced how search engines work, as well as an increase in the number of tools that did the search work. Not only can buyers simplify how they find a home, but they can also compare different results for a combined look at what’s available versus just one perspective they would typically get from a single agent’s help. The common and free tools like Zillow, Realtor.com, and Trulia give a broad neighborhood perspective of the inventory available, and then folks use similar tools to find an agent to look at specific homes they zeroed in on as candidates.
Seeing Without Traveling
Mikael Hastrup has recently seen a solid number of agents working heavily with visual tools and 360-degree video to show off homes when buyers couldn’t visit in person. Many continue to still use those tools to keep an edge on the competition and pick up buyers geographically displaced otherwise. Instead of letting go of distance markets, these agents are looking to expand their portfolio and sell to prospective customers who have never set foot in a location until they commit to buying a property. Digital “walk-throughs” are an upgraded standard that has remained post-COVID and is likely to expand with additional features.
Third-Party Inspectors
As a hybrid between freelancers, digital product delivery, the challenge of distance, and selling agents being flexible, buyers have been hiring remote inspectors to help look at, visit, and evaluate homes with detailed reports on what their worth is in comparison to the buyer’s criteria. These contracted views almost act as a proxy buyer, doing all the same presence work as the buyer himself except delivering the information digitally, notes Mikael Hastrup.
Increased Ability to Obtain Mortgage Information
Mikael Hastrup remembers it used to be that buyers had to go from bank to bank, lender to lender, to find mortgage information, rates, and which lender was likely to work best with a buyer. After COVID, that information moved online with a significantly larger amount of data. That, in turn, gave prospective buyers a far more powerful ability to find the right financing package for their specific needs versus spending a lot of time going from one bank to the next. Combined with historically low rates, mortgage competition now works very much in favor of buyers who use the comparative data extensively.
It’s a New Frontier
Homebuying in 2023 isn’t going to just shift back to the way that it was before COVID. Many of the technology tools used now were being experimented with before the pandemic arrived, but COVID’s restrictions made them practical tools with benefits during 2020 forward. So, Mikael Hastrup now expects that these digital tools and more will continue to be refined and improved. It’s good for the homebuyer as well as the agent.
