Building long-term client relationships with “Claim My Home”

The real estate industry is inherently built on relationships, and successful real estate agents and brokers understand the importance of cultivating long-term connections with their clients. In the digital age, leveraging data and insights on properties has become a powerful tool for professionals in the real estate sector to build and sustain lasting client relationships.

Current practices among agents/brokers to build client relationships

Below are some common practices leveraged by real estate agents and brokers to harness data and property insights to enhance their services, build trust, and foster enduring connections with their clients.

• Personalized Service: Data analytics and insights allow real estate professionals to provide personalized service tailored to the specific needs and preferences of individual clients. This usually translates to offering a Comparative Market Analysis (CMA) which includes nearby property values and market trends to power the customer to make informed decisions. In the 2010s we saw the emergence of online CMA companies that provided online versions of the CMA and later attempted to automate the CMA generation process using AVM models and market insights.
• Market Alerts: Some of the IDX platform providers help with automating the new listing or recommended listing alerts to registered users. Especially for the customer who is already in the market, this information can be timely and can help them explore and make a purchase decision.
• Client Education: Educating clients about the intricacies of the real estate market in general and providing targeted content about the local market – in the form of market trends and local real estate related news could position the real estate professional as the expert and help increase the trust in the services offered.

Engagement opportunities lost to large IDX portals

In the late 2000s, some of the large national portals led primarily by Zillow started providing property value updates as another way to engage homeowners long before they are ready to transact. The same property values are also used to provide neighboring property values to help buyers and sellers make more informed decisions on their real estate transactions.

While this is a great way to engage homeowners, it has caused many of the homeowners to become loyal users of the large nationwide portals instead of relying on the expertise provided by the local agent or broker who understands the local market to a much better degree.

Next Generation IDX to empower realtors to re-engage with the local market

It is time for the real estate professionals to retake control of their local markets. One of the opportunities available to every agent or broker is to provide a deeper homeowner engagement platform better than what the nationwide portals offer. Here is a set of capabilities that can position the agent as the first stop for information on their property:

• Accurate property values powered by an appraisal grade AVM and which can be selectively customized by the agent using a detailed personalized CMA.
• Public mortgage data on every property that can auto-estimate the homeowner’s net equity in the property
• A partnership with a local mortgage broker or loan officer to present financing alternatives that can help the homeowner save on mortgages.

“Claim my Home” is a phrase to represent the above concept where a homeowner can verify their ownership of a property and then obtain deep monthly insights on their financial position as well as many more recommendations from the agent.

This will help position the agent as their go to resource for their next real estate transaction. While all these sounds complex it can be completely automated. One such platform that provides end-to-end automation for the “Claim my Home” features above is Prospektr’s NextGen IDX.

Key Takeaway

Real estate agents and brokers have to establish themselves as the trusted real estate advisors for their past clients and start building long-term relationships. While a cool looking website can make a first impression it will not last long unless the agent provides meaningful value to customers in the way of tools and expertise that engenders trust.