The Home Buying Process Is Changing—Are You Ready?

COVID has forced home builders to adopt a wide array of technology to meet the needs of homebuyers in this new environment. Buyers are shopping for homes differently so builders need to sell differently. And with the high-demand, low-supply for homes, there is a greater urgency than normal.

Shopping online is nothing new. For other purchases, self-serve is the standard. Buyers absorb all the product information they can online, check out user reviews, and then ”add to cart” when they are ready to buy. Amazon trained consumers well.

While putting those $20 pair of socks in the cart is a lot simpler than buying a home, online is the way buyers want to shop.

In the webinar “New Home Sales and Marketing Solutions for Today’s New Normal,” Tim Costello with BDX refers to the importance of self-guided purchases, which leads to less buyer’s remorse because the customer was choosing it as opposed to being sold. As Stuart Siegal from Cornerstone Solutions says, builders “need to transition as quickly as possible to the ‘Amazon World’ to survive and thrive.”

As a home builder, are you ready for the new self-serve world? How do you meet the needs of the new home buyer?

• Put all the information you can on your website. Include lots of pictures and videos, of course. People are visual, and you need to showcase your beautiful homes.
• Show them where they’ll live. Leveraging Google Maps, make sure they can see how their new home fits in their lives. Close to their kid’s school? How far from work? They need to imagine how the home matches with the key areas of their life.
• Change the call-to-action. Go from “Call Now” to “Buy Now.” When Buyers like what they see, they want to act. Clicking on a button means they can start the process right away—no waiting or leaving a voicemail. Accepting a credit card on your site does require additional infrastructure, but it supports the buyer in the way they want to shop.

While not every buyer is ready to purchase their home online, they want a more self-serve experience, so it’s important to have the tools and infrastructure on your site (coupled with an Online Sales Counselor) to help support the new home-buying process.

Learn how LotVue Interactive Site Maps can help you engage homebuyers on your website.