The New Demands for Listings

By CRMLS

Perhaps some agents are long enough in the tooth to remember when the initial way to grab a potential client's attention was to put up a poster in their office's window on Main St. They were pretty simple affairs — a few photos, a few words, and an "enquire within" loudly welcoming people into the office. Well, that was then, and the internet is now.

As with most of the world, real estate has left the brick and mortar and gone online. People are used to easily accessing more and more information, down to the most micro element. It isn't enough to just read a magazine's review of a restaurant, you can go online and find someone's photo of each individual dish and a video reviewing the parking situation. Shoppers are used to getting the nitty gritty of everything they could possibly buy, so why wouldn't real estate be the same?

How do we, as real estate professionals, adapt to this new and ongoing trend?

Clients these days expect to know the finer details and every nook and cranny of a property presented to them well before they make the trek to an open house, so we have to provide. That's why CRMLS is offering new tools to help an agent's listing have the most complete set of details and features to really impress upon their clients and encourage more conversion.

One of the most requested pieces of information on any listing is a floor plan, and the more detailed, the better. After all, clients may want to move with their current home furnishings, and that sectional sofa requires a living room of a certain size. But commissioning a floor plan has historically been an added, expensive hassle. To combat this, CRMLS now offers CubiCasa to all its users, which makes generating a floor plan as easy as taking a video on your phone. All you need to do is walk through a property, taking a video of the walls and floors, and within a day CubiCasa will convert that video to a 2D floor plan with measurements. While this service is free to all CRMLS users, if you so choose you can spend a little extra for added features like 3D floor plans or expedited delivery. Now every listing can have a floor plan that can live in the MLS for all your future needs.

What’s also important for a listing to appeal to an online client? Video. It's high time we move past clunky virtual walkthroughs and into fully hosted, manageable video right in the MLS. That's why CRMLS is now working with WellcomeMat, the video platform designed for real estate. When you upload your videos directly to the MLS with WellcomeMat, you can manage, share, and chapter your videos right there. No longer do you need to rely on ad-filled, third-party platforms that take your clients away from the listing. What's more, you'll get access to unique analytics that track your videos' performance, so you can see who's watching it where and leverage that data for future sales.

Trends in real estate can happen at breakneck speed (this season's hottest design: industrial rustic, or rural modern, or cyber cottage, or…) but others can be slower and more methodical. We've seen the trend towards more knowledge and more listing information grow slowly and steadily, with more clients getting used to having all the minute details, all at once. Give them the info they want before they even ask for it when you use CRMLS's new technologies, all available to you, right now.