How is Automation Helping Real Estate Firms Weather the Pandemic Storm?

COVID-19 has challenged the process of buying, showing, and selling homes.

Due to government-enforced lockdowns and health and safety restrictions, real estate agents have not been able to hold open houses the “old-fashioned” way. Homebuyers have also been hesitant to visit houses for sale, which is essential to getting people interested in their potential future homes. Fortunately, technology has helped to fill the void. People are used to searching for properties online. Real estate agents have taken the next step, employing digital marketing strategies and virtual home tours to show properties for sale.

Automation is also helping real estate brokerages to support their agents and grow their business.

Internal processes and workflows for real estate purchases

Automating the brokerage’s internal processes and workflows will help agents and other employees to be more efficient, particularly when performing administrative and repetitive tasks. Real estate agents can:

• Assign deadlines and reminders for various tasks
• Organize tasks according to workflow and contact
• Track personal KPIs
• Sync appointments between calendars and planning applications
• Automate document workflow
• Access documents from different locations
• Publish reports on their progress

Sales and marketing of homes for sale

Sales and marketing activities can take up a significant amount of time for agents. While these functions are important, this is valuable time that could be spent with buyers and sellers. Automation enables real estate agents to automate several sales and marketing functions, such as:

• Collecting contact information and other data on leads
• Grouping customers in different categories
• Tracking interactions with customers
• Creating different buyer personas
• Automating reminders for clients
• Customizing marketing campaigns and messages for prospects and clients

Invoicing and payment processes for buying and selling a home

Automation can help real estate brokerages reduce the administrative work involved in sending and managing invoices and payments. Automating invoice submission, order tracking, reception of payments and other time-consuming processes helps by:

• Producing cumulative savings across the organization
• Improving communications between clients, vendors, and partners
• Increasing real-time visibility of transactions

Real estate appraisals and field inspections

Engaging third parties to appraise homes and conduct field inspections is time-consuming. However, it is an essential step in the approval process for real estate purchases. Automation enables real estate brokerages to:

• Schedule and track field inspections and property appraisals
• Match orders to specific appraisers and field inspectors
• Generate professional appraisal reports

Coordination of human resources in the real estate brokerage space

Employees make up a significant percentage of a real estate brokerage’s expenses. Automation enables the business to employ fewer deal processing clerks to handle paperwork, as well as hire more agents to increase deal volume. Agents can then be redeployed to regions with more sales opportunities, such as suburban and rural areas with lower deal sizes but higher deal volume. Automation will also help:

• Improve overall efficiency across all human resources
• Speed up engagement between buyers and sellers
• Enhance visibility over the lifecycle of the transaction

Final Word

Domain 6 Inc. can help real estate brokerages identify efficiencies across the business and put together a solution framework that will allow you to transform while minimizing the impact on the running business.

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