Buying and selling land is being revolutionized by tech advancements, according to land investment professional Curtis Williams. Proptech applications are creating enhanced marketing, improved branding, better customer engagement, and easy access to interactive and rich data.
Everyone knows real estate listings are traditionally the starting point for communicating if a property is available for sale. Real estate listings date back to as far as 1907, when brokers used them to show properties to other brokers, as the Boards of Realtors records.
The land listing traditionally consists of text describing the property’s location, terrain characteristics and ways to view the property.
Every effective land listing does three things:
- Attracts enough buyers to ensure a competitive offer
- Sells the property
- Builds a track record to secure more listings
As we approach 2023, proptech, just like other areas of real estate, is impacting the future of land listings. The following examples elaborate on how proptech enhances five areas of land listings.
1. Enhanced marketing
“Good marketing makes the company look smart. Great marketing makes the customer feel smart,” Joe Chernov said. The primary purpose of creating a listing is to communicate to the buyer all the information needed to make an informed decision about the purchase.
Listing a large land tract is more complicated than just listing a home. Even more than bathroom colors, a land broker would want to point out some of the unique features associated with acreage to potential purchasers.
For example, in the listing, the seller may want to communicate where the best hunting areas are or the location of a stocked pond. However, even the terrain characteristics, trails and easements are challenging to communicate in text.
Proptech can enhance the capability of the listing by showing the unique features of the property using geospatial location intelligence.
2. Powerful branding
Proptech is allowing agents to brand themselves through automation. Many of the repetitive tasks around marketing campaigns, lead generation and social media engagement are being impacted by the advancements in proptech. These tools give agents a competitive advantage by keeping them in front of customers.
An old saying is that a potential customer must see a marketing piece at least 10 times before registering for action. Automation is making this task of repetition easier.
Good customer service has always been a great way to brand oneself as a professional. In real estate, like in other industries, artificial intelligent chatbots are used to answer questions and route inquiries to the correct expert.
This is a great way to improve the customer experience, not to mention the time given back to the agent to redirect to other profitable activities. In addition, real estate agents use these tools to differentiate themselves in the marketplace and build their brands.
3. Easier engagement
Proptech can enable an agent to better manage leads and clients through land listing customer relationship management. It can also allow buyers to make contact and request additional information 24/7.
Listing platforms enable agents to follow up with email, text messages and reminders, helping agents excel at the following:
- Collecting leads
- Staying top-of-mind
- Building trusting relationships
- Positioning themselves as experts in their field
4. Interactive property details
A unique experience tailored to each user seems to be the promised land of the internet. The advancement of virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and now the metaverse are all steps along the journey. Likewise, proptech is being swept along the path of progress toward extending interactive data to land listings.
Creating listings incorporating dynamic data that allows the agent or buyer to combine information to discover the right property is nirvana. For example, allowing the user to pull up a listing and superimpose flood data, tide data, weather trends, soil and crop data means an agent can extend tools to the buyer.
In addition, the buyers can use this interactive data to discuss important aspects of their purchase with their family more accurately.
5. Improved industry data
The collection of data in the information age is ever-increasing. The real estate industry is following suit by working toward collecting and understanding the data.
Proptech is enriching data collection by using artificial intelligence to perform predictive analytics.
Savvy real estate professionals can glean some exciting predictions by using predictive analytics, such as:
- How local building regulatory information impacts the feasibility of land development
- The likelihood of land development would meet a specified return on investment based on an area’s current and future demographic and property value makeup
- Future building performance measurements and total cost of ownership calculations
The future impact of proptech on land listings
Today, proptech applications are changing land listings for the better through enhanced marketing, improved branding, better customer engagement, and easy access to interactive and rich data.
Perhaps in the future, with the advancement in proptech smart contracts, someone can buy directly from a real estate listing through a functioning “Buy Now” or “Make A Offer” button. The seller would embed this button in listings, allowing a buyer to make one click to purchase.
Buyers could fill out a form and make an offer on the listing platform. Agents can add workflow capability to route the offer from the buyer for review, comment and approval.
The prospective impact of proptech on the land real estate industry has yet to be genuinely felt, but one can be sure that buying and selling land will continue to be revolutionized by technological advancements.
Curtis Williams is a land investment professional with National Land Realty, the nation’s fastest-growing real estate land brokerage. Connect with him on LinkedIn.
