Young millennials undoubtedly face more considerable home buying hurdles than previous generations.
Let’s start with the expensive elephant in the room – property prices are skyrocketing due to rising demand and shrinking inventory. In addition, millennials work longer hours for less disposable income than their parents, making their time a more precious commodity.
Driving for hours on weekends to view multiple properties made for a fun family road trip decades ago. Nowadays, who has the time or energy?
It’s also tougher to find trustworthy agents, at least by conventional means. Feedback, experience, and reputation are all manipulated by some agencies on search engines and social media pages.
Yet, many millennial homebuyers are finding ways to tour multiple homes, connect with suitable agents, and find properties within their budgets using PropTech.
Short for property technology, PropTech is any software or hardware that derives efficiencies in the real estate industry. Young millennials, who are typically comfortable making complex decisions from their computers and devices, utilize PropTech in a changing world.
Next-Gen Real Estate Platform
Led by CEO Regan McGee, Nobul is an innovative platform that’s shaking up the real estate industry by recognizing that homebuyers and sellers should be in control. Nobul crunches millions of reviews and real estate transactions to recommend top-performing agents to users.
It’s also the only platform to verify agent reviews so buyers can avoid less reputable professionals.
But that’s not all.
- Users can ask agents questions without feeling pressured to sign up with them.
- They can get multiple quotes without sharing their contact information.
- Agent stats like experience, home closures, purchases, and reviews are visible.
- There are cash-back incentives.
- Commission rates are transparent.
Conversational AI
Money is not an easy topic of conversation for anyone, especially for a cohort facing historically high home prices, large student loans, and rising living costs. Many millennials find it easier to have initial homebuying conversations with AI-powered chatbots that let users know if they prequalify for property purchases and how much they qualify for.
Such AI-powered chatbots accelerate the mortgage loan process by quickly digesting and analyzing data, recalling information, and making rapid calculations. They also match applicants with lenders.
Older generations may hesitate to offer bank statements, credit reports, and other personal documents to online automotive software, but for millennials, these PropTech tools are a natural progression in the real estate industry.
Virtual Reality
Virtual reality (VR) headsets have been around for several decades in some shape or form, but sales have only started increasing over the last few years. Modern VR headsets are more powerful at lower prices with fewer side effects. Not surprisingly, people between the ages of 16 and 34 are the most likely to use VR.
Noticing these trends, real estate companies have, in partnership with experiential marketing companies, begun using high-resolution panoramic cameras to create intimate virtual tours for busy millennials, who can view dozens of properties in a day in great detail. For example, the Oculus Quest 2 allows users to see homes at an exceptionally high resolution of 1832×1920 per eye.
Virtual tours made with outstanding production values can also be interactive. A viewer may have a virtual tablet during the experience, allowing them to switch between kitchens, bathrooms, bedrooms, balconies, and surrounding areas.
The home purchasing process can be long and taxing for anyone. But with PropTech, millennials can get more done in significantly less time without leaving their homes.
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