This week, we have a guest post from Raj Qsar, principal and owner of The Boutique Real Estate Group in Orange County, CA, a contributor for Inman News, and one of the Top 100 Most Influential Real Estate Leaders for 2013. His company is one of the most dominant real estate firms in Orange County. They focus heavily on utilizing technology to provide more complete and convenient service to all of their customers.
Digitize the Real Estate Experience
We had out “ah-ha” moment back in 2008 as technology and social media found Real Estate. We knew there had to be a better way of not only marketing residential real estate but there also had to be a better way of managing the mountain of paperwork and people involved in a real estate transaction. So in a sense our team has digitized the real estate experience.
Do not get me wrong….We are not robots. We still care, are empathetic and truly love our clients. And because of this love and passion for our clients you will never find our clients running to a fax machine and most likely never even pick up a pen to sign anything. We are a 99% paperless office. Our agents & staff are completely mobile and can run an entire real estate transaction from our iPads and iPhones.
Our technology does not require our clients to be tech savvy – it only requires our agents to understand the benefits of technology and to implement that technology with our clients. Our commitment to technology has even allowed us to bring in an in-house Chief Technology Officer, Jeremy Lehman, who can train our agents and enable them to provide this luxury service to our clients.
Connect More Intimately With Clients
The world is now on the web – advances in technology are changing the way businesses interact with clients and we understand this process. People are on their smartphones, heads down and focused. The next time you are in line at your local coffee shop just look around. Everyone will be head down and in their phone checking emails, scrolling through a news feed on a social platform or just listening to music. We know we need to be where our clients are, so we can be at the forefront of their minds, and more importantly, not forgotten.
Our clients are on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Linked In, Pinterest, Twitter and Four Square. However, the Facebook user is different than the Linked In user, who is totally different than the individual on Instagram.
Learn more about social media for real estate marketing here.
The Facebook user is more likely to be someone you know so the posts there are geared more like a friend to friend discussion and allows for a targeted ad campaign. The posts on Twitter are 140 characters so its “in & out” with a specific message to an audience. Instagram is one of our favorites and allows a more intimate connection. Newer platforms likeRESAAS allow us to engage with an international audience of real estate professionals. You will see that our content strategy is different depending on the platform, who we are trying to reach, and what message we are trying to push.
Streamline the Process
When it comes to in-transaction management the mountain of paperwork that needs to happen is insane. You have buyers, sellers, lender, escrow, title, transaction coordinators, home inspectors, termite inspectors and many others who are involved someway or somehow in your transaction. They all have their paperwork and it all needs to be reviewed, understood and communicated to everyone in the transaction.
How do we create our paperwork? What do we create it on? How do we eSign? How do we store this info? How do we share it with everyone? This is the beauty of technology: our ability to create a REAL estate experience like no other with our clients and co-operating brokers.
This is real estate’s new normal for communicating and engaging with our clients to create a streamlined, easy to use & understand process. It did not happen overnight but required dedication, time, and resources devoted to tech to make it happen.
Technology allows us to be a smart office, engage with our clients in positive manner and allow us to create an experience that is evergreen.
You can connect with us at www.theboutiquere.com.
If you’re interested in learning more about Raj, check out our From the Trenches interview with him.
