With our age of technology, easy access to home listings and working with a real estate agent have never been easier—but it wasn’t always this way! Even as few as five, ten or twenty years ago, buying or selling a home was not quite the fast-paced process it is now.
In today’s blog, we will be looking at the ways real estate has changed—in most cases, for the better—in recent years.
Finding a home…
Whether you’re considering buying a home now, or did so 30 years ago, the first step has always been the same: finding the home you want! However, how we go about doing this has certainly changed over time.
Before internet use was around—or even before it was as universal as it is today—searching for a home typically meant looking through the newspaper listings for one. You would see a listing that piqued your interest and head to the house to see it for yourself to get a better feel for it.
Today, we still have newspaper listings—but we also so much more! More buyers today are looking for homes online before ever checking the physical paper. This makes it easier to keep an eye on a potential home while it’s on the market, and often lets you see the home (and in some cases, “experience” it through a virtual tour) without ever having to leave your house. This development in the industry is a great one for those who like to visualize a space before they visit it—seeing a home, even if it’s just an exterior photo, is the first step in deciding whether or not you would like to live there.
…and other resources
Other resources needed in the home buying or selling process are easily found online. Instead of asking friends and family for help finding services you may need—which is still a viable option—you can easily do your own research on moving professionals and real estate agents before you pick one.
The internet also became a great place for a wealth of information on every step of the selling, buying or moving process. To learn about good staging techniques or to get advice on landscaping for curb appeal, today’s home seller can simply search for this information and find videos, articles and peer accounts to help. In this way, technology has made real estate a much more social and interactive industry.
Client-agent communication
Finally, changes over the last decade or so have led to one of our favorite developments in the industry: improved communication between clients and agents. We know that home buying or selling can be a stressful process at time, at not being able to reach your real estate professional when you need them can make it even more so. Fortunately, the advent of devices like smartphones have extended “office hours” and made it easier for agents to communicate important information, updates or photos with their clients (and vice a versa).
All in all, new technologies have made real estate a much more collaborative, interactive industry—and we love it! Let us know what your favorite factors of modern real estate are in the comments.
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