March 27, 2019: While COVID-19 pandemic lockdown has pushed real estate in a downward spiral, many real estate companies and developers have come up with solutions to keep the ball rolling. Instead of offering an actual site visit to available properties, many companies offered interested consumers a virtual tour of the property.
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The last few days have so far registered the largest number of tech-driven virtual visits and queries.
Replacing face to face interaction and the site visit, the entire process from site visit to enquiries was hosted on digital platforms by a lot of firms. The combination of technology, telephony and internet along with 3D virtual walk-throughs powered by Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning saw few online bookings too. While these technologies have been around for a while now, it is during ths pandemic that real estate firms are cashing in on the trend.
Few firms already use the digital platform to cater to their NRI buyers but capacity to replace personal visits even for local home buyers has been more felt during the lockdown, especially as many southern states believe in buying/booking a house during auspicious days such as Gudi Padwa. It is trying times like these that make adaption to technology a faster process.
Just as ordering food and groceries online have been accepted by users, the virtual sales and marketing set-up has been the saviour for many a home seeker around the festival dates.
How many of these will convert into actual sales cannot be ascertained for now, but the lockdown has opened the conventional Indian home-buyer to the possibility of taking virtual tour of a property.
Most of these seekers can be categorised as ‘new millennial home buyers’ and their interest marks the coming of age of a process which has potential to develop into a full-fledged alternative to personal visits.
In today’s age homes and locations can be zeroed in at the click of a button through online home discovery which many platforms are offering. For the process of entire negotiation and purchase online to become mainstream, it would take a while but the lockdown has had some success ironically!
Given the advantage that these new platforms offer, even in the scenario following the COVID-19 pandemic, once things return to normalcy, let’s hope that sales and marketing continue to leverage the advantage of these digital platforms.
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