To wrap up our welcome aboard series, I want to tie it all together with an old saying:
Content is King.
Fortunately, we create some of the best content out there, including the core foundation of every home, the floor plan. Remember the Zillow research we showed in Topic #1, where it listed the top activities buyers viewed as important as part of their home search? Here they are again, and how the content we create is associated with each item:
1. Take a Private Tour – we do this with our 3D Walkthrough Tour where a browser can explore every inch of a home, from the comfort of their own couch.
2. Access to Pre-Inspection Report – it can be uploaded as a document.
3. View Comprehensive Data & History – it can be uploaded as documents and will be pulled from HomeDiary in the future.
4. View a Floor Plan – we have been creating interactive floor plans for 19 years now, plus we add a 3D designer/planner tool and it can all. be used by the buyer post-purchase.
With the HomeDiary Story, we can do all of this and show the content all in one comprehensive single property website that keeps your brand on it when viewed from the most popular websites like Zillow. This has proven to help our clients win more listings, and win the sale because this content has also been proven by different studies to help sell homes faster and for more money then the market average:
- A Pre-Inspection Report (2.5%) or Certification Report (5% for a Pearl Certification Report)
- Floor plans – up to 26% more commission for agents
- A 3D Tour – up to 9% and 20% faster
- Professional photos – 2.5%
Ultimately, it is about alleviating buyer fear – the more information people have about one of the most expensive purchases they will ever make, the more they will pay for the asset they are buying, and the more people you will get bidding on that asset, thus increasing the price. That is why with covid and the increase in virtual selling tools, 55% of buyers said they would be willing to make sight unseen offers if it had the right kind of content (64% of Millennials). Amazon found this early on selling books, where at the time you could get more info on a $10 book than you could for a $1 million real estate listing. This concept translates into the car industry too – cars with a Carfax or a Certified Pre-owned status sell for more than cars without those designations.
Zillow also has come out and said that listings on Zillow with interactive floor plans get saved 79% more often and get 60% more views than listings without. This is why Zillow is aggressively trying to create floor plans – because they know buyers want them, but we think this kind of data should be kept out of the hands of Zillow – look at what they did with your listing photos – what do you think they will do with floor plans, the core foundation of every house that can be transferred from owner to owner?
Because we can also provide this content to the buyer once they purchase the home via our Claim Home process, it really helps you win the sale as well because the content lives on as a useful asset for the next owner. Plus, you get content attribution on the content claimed by a buyer. We think this can lead more business back to you in a subtle way – I say this because we have been around long enough that we have had the same listing agent relist the same house 3 times now (another agent we know of has relisted 9 houses multiple times). It’s not that the agent double ended each transaction, it’s that each person that bought the home wanted the same content to sell their home as they got when they bought it, so they sought out that original listing agent. Again, content is king, and sellers were once buyers, so the above Zillow stats are equally important to communicate at the listing appointment.
More importantly with HomeDiary, the buyer/new owner becomes the owner of their home’s floor plan, not Zillow (who claims exclusive rights to use the floor plans they create…again, why?). We are the ONLY tour or home management platform that allows the homeowner to be in control of their floor plan and where the floor plan can be shared, edited, reused and used as a remodeling and “what if” tool, just like I have done with my home and a future first floor bedroom/bathroom remodel idea that took me 3 minutes to do in HomeDiary that could have a potential $100,000 increase to my home’s value. We have some exciting future ideas on how this tool can be shared in a collaborative way with connected home pros, so look for more in the future.
