The cooling real estate market is posing some difficulties for agents.
Many homeowners who refinanced at lower rates during the last couple of years are choosing to stay in their homes with their locked-in mortgage rate rather than placing them on the market. And with rates as high as they are now, there is less purchase activity in general.
“Finding people who want to sell their home and having them choose you as their agent is a lot more challenging than it used to be,” CubiCasa President Jeff Allen said. “Agents are going to be challenged to demonstrate to their sellers that they’ve done everything they can to market the listing in a really attractive and accurate way.”
How can agents help sellers market effectively?
In this real estate market, “you have to do more as an agent to make listings stand out and give home searchers what they want,” Allen said.
So what are home searchers looking for in a listing?
According to Allen, “Home searchers definitely have always indicated in all the research that they love and want floor plans.” Research from the National Association of Realtors has shown that homebuyers consider floor plans the top most desired feature on a home listing, after standard listing photos and property data.
Floor plans are the best digital asset to accomplish the goal of helping potential buyers understand if a property is right for them. A floor plan allows a prospective buyer to see how large the rooms are and how they’re laid out, and even visualize themselves in the property.
“This single image gives you a total understanding of the home in a five-second view,,” Allen said. “That’s why floor plans are 100% ubiquitous in a lot of other countries around the world where they have taken on this critical piece in the real estate process.”
What makes floor plans so valuable in today’s real estate market?
Because floor plans are not ubiquitous in the U.S., including them helps your listing stand out in a market where that’s more important than ever.
Agents who use floor plans bring stronger value to home sellers with their services, Allen said.
“Show sellers that you’re going above and beyond in what you offer in terms of your listing package and how you market homes,” he said. “Prove that you’ll do whatever it takes to get people that are informed about the property to visit.”
Floor plans also help sellers understand the true measurements and size of their property before it goes on the market so they’re prepared for what’s going to happen in the inspection and appraisal process, Allen added.
Ultimately, floor plans benefit both buyers and sellers by providing valuable information and preventing either party from wasting time showing buyers homes that won’t work for their needs.
“It’s about making the listing stand out and giving buyers the experience they’re looking for,” Allen said. “Additionally, if a buyer is equipped with a floor plan before they ever visit the property, you are going to have a much clearer sense that when they come to visit the home, they’re serious.”
CubiCasa’s floor plan tech
CubiCasa is on a mission to make floor plans a standard part of U.S. home listings. Its technology and app enable anyone with a smartphone to do a five-minute property walkthrough and get back a detailed and accurate floorplan of a home with no training required. And there’s even a free version of the product that enables agents to produce floor plans at zero cost.
In addition, agents can choose to use CubiCasa on their own or access the Company’s network of more than 2,000 real estate photographers, covering all 50 states, who are already using the technology and can assist in providing this crucial digital asset of the property. Agents can assure their clients that they are receiving accurate and compliant data on a property using the mobile scanning app.
“Having that digital asset attached to a listing gives buyers an unbiased and clear understanding of the home,” Allen said.
There are other sources of data for other information on the house – for example, how many bedrooms or bathrooms it has – but a lot of that data is input by a party interested in showing the property in the best light, he noted.
“A floor plan is unique because it does serve a marketing purpose, but it’s also trustworthy,” Allen said. “Our technology is what has generated the output and the data, and it has not been influenced by anyone. The scan is performed by a human but in the end, it’s our process and our technology that produces the results.”
To learn more about CubiCasa, visit cubi.casa.