Do you have the right tools & technology set up to attract millennials, international buyers and mobile first clients this year? These are the top three home buyer trends that are on the rise in 2015. How can you make the most of these trends in your luxury real estate marketing for 2015? Inman just posted their results from polling industry insiders along with top producing customers to focus in on the most important home buyer trends of 2015. Read on to see how you can start tailoring your luxury real estate marketing strategies for 2015 with these invaluable suggestions.
1. Millennial home buyers are driving the market.
Millennials cover 40 percent of the real estate market. This is hardly a number to overlook. As their baby boomer parents are settling in, millennials are starting to make that jump into home ownership and many some day soon may even jump into the second home real estate market. The Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University found that “the number of households in their 30s should increase by 2.7 million over the coming decade, which should boost the demand for new housing”.
This generation craves on-demand information and service. All they have ever known is instant communication: texting, emailing, Google. The days of waiting for someone to return your message that you left yesterday are over. This generation has never used an answering machine let alone a fax machine. Even voice mail is becoming a thing of the past with more immediate availabilities like texting or Skype chat.
Luxury real estate agents that utilize cutting edge technology and communication including collaboration tools, digital listing presentations and social media will be the ones that most appeal to the millenials. Text messaging and mobile technology are becoming the critical foundation for communicating with this generation. Inman says that Millennials continue to “switch their attention between media platforms like laptops, smartphones, tablets and television 27 times per hour on average.”
Will you be able to keep up in 2015? Finding the right tools to carve out a millennial market share will be well worth the investment long into the future.
2. More international home buyers are coming to the market looking for urban properties.
Over the last year, international buyers have been slowly gaining momentum as a significant niche market for savvy luxury realtors. Inman states, “foreign buyers accounted for $92.2 billion in real estate sales in the twelve months ending March 2014”. International home buyers tend to prefer urban areas along with a luxury lifestyle and easy access to work, school and social amenities. For more tips on how to lure international luxury real estate buyers check out our previous, but still very relevant, blog post here.
Only 28 percent of Realtors reported having international clients and only 4 percent of Realtors report having more than 10 international clients in a year. This is a huge opportunity, especially for luxury real estate agents. The competition is low while the rewards can be enormous.
What would it take for you to target more international clientele this year? Adding just 2 or 3 new international home buyers this year could dramatically increase your income. In 2016, see if you can double that goal.
What do you need to market to an international audience this year?
Can your website easily be translated into another language?
Do you have a digital listing presentation tool available for your international home buyers to view?
Do you have technological transaction tools setup like DocuSign?
What website optimization do you have set up that illustrates the local communities’ amenities?
3. Mobile-first buyers are on the rise.
According to a study by the National Association of Realtors, 89 percent of new home buyers use a mobile search engine at the onset and throughout their search. 45 percent use their mobile devices to actually request more information about a property. That’s 45%! So if you’ve been on the fence or just haven’t bothered to update your website or a digital listing presentation with a responsive website design, there should be no debate now. It must be responsive. Otherwise, you are missing out on 45% of the market.
Technology savvy home buyers are seeking not just a responsive website, but a mobile experience from start to finish. This can include everything from location based data searches to transaction tool apps. The use of mobile devices is actually making the luxury real estate sales process shorter. Home buyers often use their mobile device to eliminate the homes that don’t make the cut then request information for the ones that they later buy.
What mobile technology infrastructure do you have set up this year to close deals faster and meet the demand of tech savvy luxury home buyers?
Can buyers communicate with you via text or live chat?
Can you scan or send documents through your mobile device & theirs?
Are your website design & search capabilities just as dynamic & accessible on both computer, phone and tablet?
What micro-location tools do you have set up?
Read more of the Inman poll & their original post here.
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