2014 was an unbelievable year for real estate technology. As the digital revolution starts to pick up speed in the real estate industry, a plethora of high tech startups have stepped forward to help with more effective and more efficient tools to help you sell more real estate. If you’ve been following Clearview’s blog over the last year, you’ve seen our Tuesday Tech Tips which often featured the latest and greatest state of the art technology to help realtors save time, decrease frustration and increase luxury real estate sales. We’ve picked the Top 5 Most Important Luxury Real Estate Tech Tools of 2014. What were your favorites of 2014?
1. Beamly
Straight from a science fiction novel, micro-location marketing offers a virtual sales process where information is handed to us via mobile phone when we are in proximity to something in the real world, whether it’s a home for sale or the nearest Starbucks. Beamly seems to be leading the pack making it simple for real estate agents and property developers to deliver virtual walk throughs and customization information to prospective buyers.
Buyers don’t have to go to a design center or off-site gallery to see options and finishes, and they can explore options with their mobile device during tours. When sales agents can be too invasive, and print collateral too limiting, micro-location-based marketing offers a compelling alternative. Read more at Mobile Real Estate Zone or watch a demo below for an overview of mirco-location marketing.
2. CamScanner
If you are ready to make the jump to a completely virtual office, Cam Scanner can help your real estate business go mobile. Cam Scanner enables you to scan documents directly from your mobile device – and makes them look like real scans. Instead of rushing to the office to send out documents, you can now get this done on the go. Small but vital tech tools like these can be life changers that give you the freedom to show up fully in all areas of your personal and professional life. Cam Scanner is free and also offers upgraded subscriptions for only $4.99/mo.
3. REALizer by Tumlis
Ever been caught off guard by a buyer? Didn’t have time to do your homework? California brokerage & tech firm Tumlis will now allow any agent to be prepared with instanteous market research at their fingertips. Tumlis has launched REALizer in 2014, a tool that provides agents with a better understanding of the market conditions surrounding a specific home at the neighborhood level. Tumlis founder & CEO Tom Horvath recently told Inman News that REALizer will help agents shed light on how to price specific homes for sellers and where their value lies for buyers. Utilizing geo-based listing data & a patent-pending predictive analytics dashboard REALizer can help agents determine:
- The value of a home.
- How soon a buyer or seller should take action.
- How long a property will remain on the market at the current asking price.
- How the price of a home influences its days on market.
- Whether a neighborhood be hot or not in the future.
4. RoomScan
This is one of the most simple and exciting pieces of mobile technology for real estate professionals. With Locometric’s RoomScan, you can draw up a floor plan or figure out the dimensions of a room in mere seconds. Need to make adjustments? No problem you can customize the dimensions manually as well. This app has been made for all levels of technological know how. Voice prompts walk you through what needs to be done, step-by-step. You simply hold you phone up to a wall, wait for the beep, and move on to the next wall or corner. There is a free version of this iPhone app and the paid version is only $4.99. For more info read more at Properties Online.
5. Balcony
New startup Balcony allows you to throw away your Excel spreadsheets and upgrade to a new way of tracking referrals. Balcony, launching this fall, is a referral platform that allows agents to search for, rate and review referral partners, track deals, and get paid for sending clients to another agent.
Balcony, along with Clearview Elite, is one of the nine innovative real estate technology companies, chosen by Real Trends for their Business Accelerator Program. This program introduces startups that are leading the way in harnessing the power of the Internet in the real estate technology industry.
While the real estate referral process can be frustrating for it’s lack of transparency, Balcony takes the guesswork out of each deal. Realogy’s luxury brand, Sotheby’s International Realty, brought on real estate tech firm Immobel to launch a new referral platform in June that allowed it to retire paper from its referral process. While some brands have their own internal referral process, Balcony is making a play at garnering an industry wide market share. For more information on how Real Estate Agents are using Balcony you can read more here.
And as an honorable mention and shameless plug, we can easily add Clearview Elite to this list for the quickest high tech way to take your lead response game to the next level. Just ask our clients that continue to use Clearview year after year to create elegant web-based listing presentations, receive real time activity alerts, offer referral partner presentations & build thier unbeatable lead response systems: The Lodges at Calistoga Ranch, Grand Isle Resort & Spa, The Reefs Club, The Palms Private Residences, Martis Camp and more. We’d love to add you to the list & hear how we can help you sell more real estate this year. Let us know.
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