Making the decision to sell your home is one of the most significant decisions many people will ever make. On average we move and sell our homes every seven to ten years. Since it's an experience we don't do very often, it tends to be a costly one filled with issues and frustration. In Australia, we've relied on mainstream online marketing and the traditional real estate model to sell our homes for a long time, but there's now better ways to do it.
Countries all over the world, like New Zealand, France and Canada, have incorporated new ways to buy and sell real estate, but how come we haven't embraced these alternative methods here in Australia yet? With the property sector being the largest employer in the country, why haven't we found a way to reduce the cost of selling by embracing smarter technologies to make the process more efficient?
Australian real estate marketing is old
The property market has been under constant change in the past decade. Living in a home you own has become a distant dream for many, as Australia's real estate prices continue to rise year after year. Despite the change in the market, it's interesting to see that real estate agents are still using the same old 'spray and pray' marketing techniques when selling your home. Advertising anywhere and everywhere in the hope of finding a buyer can be very costly and it can also take longer time to find the perfect buyer for your home.
In any market where there is a higher turnover of product, better systems are developed and used to streamline and improve services, as well as reduce costs. Unfortunately, this has not occurred in the Australian real estate sector. They're still using the same marketing techniques to advertise homes at the seller's cost.
Interdependence is unhealthy
Real estate agents have become interdependent on these models, feeding in property data and watching it get spat back out again. Real estate agents have tried to implement online marketing tools and portals, but it's just a repetition of the existing model. 'Same technique, different channel' doesn't mean a new and improved method of selling. The point of difference isn't strong enough and reduced the dependency or more importantly the cost of selling a home online. So, what should a new model look like for consumer?
Inspiration from other industries
Looking at how other industries have adapted to new technologies and social media, the real estate industry has lot to learn. Let's take a peek at online dating apps like Tinder, where we can select people we may like; it's open and transparent, just swipe left or right. For the user, the process is pretty straight forward, but beneath the simple action there's an advanced algorithm. The same goes for Uber and Airbnb where people can directly connect with each other, leaving the middleman out of the equation.
Can we learn from these apps and sharing economies, and adapt it to the real estate sector?
If we review how ride-sharing services make us feel safe and valued and explore how we can find accommodation that genuinely suits our needs, then we can easily see how technology, digital online marketing and smarter systems like chatbots and algorithms can enhance our real estate experience.
What is real, real estate innovation?
It's now possible to get in the driver's seat and take control of your property journey. Today's technologies make it possible for us to keep an open and transparent form of communication that will make home selling less expensive and more efficient.
We have welcomed this transparent sharing model when it comes to ride sharing, retail, dating and accommodation, and at Next Address we think it's time for the real estate industry to jump on board this growing trend.
Author bio: Julie O'Donohue is the founder of start-up Next Address, a real estate platform that directly links buyers to sellers.
