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ShareWe here at BuildersUpdate.com have heard stories of many resales being pulled off the market due to fears of having unknown visitors coming into their home and having no knowledge of their status or what surface areas they might have touched while they were not there to observe. This also applies to “ready to move in homes’. We have also heard of several builders pulling their onsite selling teams from their models and instead, putting lock boxes on the door to protect their employees. However this does little to protect their walk-in customers who do not know who has just been in those models and what was touched.
We may all be faced with changing the way we do business for the foreseeable future if we want to continue to sell homes especially with the Fed announcing cutting rates to zero to support the economy. This has the potential to create a tremendous demand for low cost mortgages.
I wanted to take a moment to offers up some suggestions on how you might be able to grow your business while maintaining a safe environment for your employees and consumers alike, without having to spend an inordinate amount of time courting and cleaning up after visitors that will not amount to anything.
An easy solution if you haven’t already instituted it would be to take advantage of a virtual tour of your properties that can be as simple as taking a video from your phone to more elaborate technical solutions to avoid having to bring in a parade of untested visitors. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so a video could be worth millions. This could also help cut down on unnecessary traffic that will then require sanitization after every visit. We could host those videos in your property detail pages for you.
We believe this to be a good time to enable our buyer registration tool now to set up appointments for agents to bring their pre-qualified buyers direct to you. This tool has proven to more than double your traffic versus those without. That way, you can make sure your property is being sanitized between visits with one of your representatives on site spending more time with a consumer that is motivated to buy. We will be happy to show you how it works and you still maintain control of how long you wish to provide this incentive to agents. Otherwise, agents want to sell inventory, and they are going to bring their buyers to those builders that are providing a safe and welcoming method to protect everyone involved.
We hope to continue to be a resource for you to use to sell your homes and limit the disruption to your business in this time. Our thoughts are for those already affected, and our hope is to reduce the further spread of this virus to limit its harm. Home building is the cornerstone of the American economy; let's all work together to make sure we move in the right direction for all while keeping everyone safe.
Although most builders spend the majority of their time courting consumers direct, the reality is that 72% of new home construction is actually sold with the help of a licensed real estate agent. When it comes time to buy, those same consumers most likely will use an agent. At that point, the builder has lost control of the consumer no matter how much time they have invested in them, and in reality the Agent will recommend those builders that value the Agent/Buyer relationship.
We believe this to be a good time to enable our buyer registration tool now to set up appointments for agents to bring their pre-qualified buyers direct to you. This tool has proven to more than double your traffic versus those without. That way, you can make sure your property is being sanitized between visits with one of your representatives on site spending more time with a consumer that is motivated to buy. We will be happy to show you how it works and you still maintain control of how long you wish to provide this incentive to agents. Otherwise, agents want to sell inventory, and they are going to bring their buyers to those builders that are providing a safe and welcoming method to protect everyone involved.
We hope to continue to be a resource for you to use to sell your homes and limit the disruption to your business in this time. Our thoughts are for those already affected, and our hope is to reduce the further spread of this virus to limit its harm. Home building is the cornerstone of the American economy; let's all work together to make sure we move in the right direction for all while keeping everyone safe.
Sincerely,
Bill
CEO
