Businesses are seamlessly trying to build a robust online presence to provide the best-in-class services to their customers. The real estate industry is no exception, as home buyers tend to search for property and information online.
Property websites and apps have gone through dramatic changes to meet their customer’s expectations. Chat integration is one of these changes.
Nowadays, real estate companies and property sellers are adopting the chat integration technology to share e-catalogs, images, and live videos of their property to potential buyers. They make a real-time conversation with customers and convince them to invest in a particular estate, and suggest the best ones.
Similarly, buyers are also using chat tools to communicate with the owners/brokers or property agents to get the details about a property, take a virtual tour of the yet-to-buy home, and negotiate prices.
Chat has enabled buyers to finalize a deal without even visiting the property.
Here is a path-breaking case study
The most recent example of the real-time chat between the buyer and seller is that of a man who bought a new one-bedroom apartment worth of US$155,000, in White Plains, New York, sitting at his home in Chicago.
The surprising fact was that he didn’t visit the property in person till he bought it. Instead, he went through the history of the property, communicated with the owner & an agent online through the in-app chat, and finalized the deal.
There is a growing number of house hunters like Graham Candish who are making this significant financial decision just after communicating with the property sellers and taking a virtual tour of flats, homes, properties.
Chat integration allows them to have a real-time conversation with the seller. It enables them to access every piece of information about the property. Besides, sellers can also clear all the doubts of the buyers instantly using a chat tool.
With virtual transactions becoming a reality, top to mid-sized real estate companies are using the chat integration in their website to make their platform more engaging and user-friendly.
How does chat integration fit into E-retail space?
Judging by the trend, chat is a crucial element for any real estate website today. For any business, the need for smooth communication between the buyer and the seller is vital to improve customer experience as well as increase sales.
Let’s take an example- Assume that you’re in city A and want to buy or rent a house in city B. On your first instinct, you’ll hop on a property marketplace to have a quick glance at the list of homes for rent/sale.
If the web portal you select has no chat integration feature, you’ll end up with the tedious process of seeing a list of properties, creating your personal list, updating that list with their respective contact details. contacting agent/owners via email or their contact number and waiting for their reply.
What if they don’t reply, and you’re unable to see the property physically?
That’s where the chat integration tool plays a vital role. With it, buyers don’t need to go through such a tedious and lengthy process.
They can directly contact the owner or the property dealer and discuss the property details. If they can’t visit the property, they can ask for the live videos to spot any faults or damage.
Having a chat integration tool on the real estate website is a significant means for reaching out to property sellers. On the other hand, the dealers can also find out potential customers who are looking to buy, rent or sell the property. Thus, the tool streamlines the process of buying and selling the property.
How chat can help buyers and sellers?
Chat Apps are cutting-edge platforms to engage, qualify, and convert buyers into clients. They are beneficial for both the buyers and the sellers.
For Buyers: The tool allows smooth communication between the buyer and the seller. A buyer can put his/her queries or doubts about a particular real estate project, and the seller can clear the buyer’s doubts by responding to him/her quickly.
For Sellers: Sellers can gain insights into the kind of property customers want to buy. Thus, they can introduce the specific project to potential buyers and share files, project details, etc. to them.
Win Trust: Chat integration brings transparency, and transparency builds trust. Since real estate is a vast industry, it has its own set of challenges. Chat establishes a direct conversation between a buyer and a seller. The seller can build confidence in the buyer’s mind by replying to him instantly and clearing all his doubts.
Reach Customers Globally: Sometimes, customers want to relocate and invest in property in another country. Whatever their needs of the hour, chat enables them to connect with sellers all across the world irrespective of the language they speak. With features like real-time translate chat there is absolutely no barrier between the buyer and seller.
Privacy: The most significant feature of the CometChat is the privacy of contact details. The buyer and the seller can have a direct chat, restricting the access to their personal details at the same time. Thus, they can dodge spam calls and messages.
Chat solutions for Real estate industry
Even for a real estate agent with a super busy workflow, chat integration is incredibly useful to connect with more prospects, increase referrals, and grow businesses. Here are top features of Chat apps and use cases of each of these features:
One-on-one chat
With the chat integration, the buyer and the seller can text each other in real time. Buyers can chat, negotiate, and get insights into the property regardless of their geographical boundaries. Sellers can also get in touch with a potential buyer to understand his or her requirements.
Use case scenario: A buyer likes a home posted by a seller who now wants to negotiate the prices.
Without chat integration: If the website has no chat integration tool, the buyer can’t contact the seller for price negotiation. As a result, he keeps his options open and might end up buying another home.
With chat integration: The property buyer can ping the seller and chat with him instantly. He can negotiate the price. If the seller agrees, the deal will be successful in no time!
Voice and video calling and conference
A property, no doubt, is an emotional purchase. It’s the most significant investment in an individual’s lifetime. Buyers don’t buy/rent an apartment or home until they are fully satisfied.
With the voice and video calling feature, they can speak to the property owner/agent or broker and have a real-time voice or video chat to dig deeper and get insights into the property.
Use case scenario: An owner has listed the property on the website for sale. An interested buyer tends to inspect the property. Since he stays far away, he can’t visit the property website. But, with the help of voice, video and conference option, he can connect with the owner of the property and ask for a live video to inspect the property.
With such a facility, the buyer can spot defects or potential damage, if any. He or she can discuss the repair costs of the damaged part with the seller, as well. Thus, they can make informed decisions whether or not to buy or rent the property.
File sharing
Buying a property becomes easy for a buyer when he or she can access all the relevant documents, irrespective of their geographical location. Chat integration makes it possible for them to collect all important papers of the property as the property dealer can share images or files over a chat session.
Use Case Scenario: Mr.Will, who resides in New Zealand, wants to buy a property in the USA and he has been going through the listings on your website. Finally, he likes a property and contacts the seller and asks them for more pictures of the house as he is unable to visit the place because of the geographical boundaries.
With chat integration The file sharing feature enables the seller to share pictures with Mr.Will who can now look at these pictures before making a decision.
Broadcast message
The broadcast feature enables agents to send text messages about any new projects to multiple users in a go. By this way, they can increase their outreach and grab the attention of all property seekers.
Use Case Scenario: If you want your customers to be aware of your latest project: its amenities and features, you can circulate a broadcast message to all the users with the broadcast message feature. With this option, you can deliver a message to all target audience in just a few clicks.
Role based access control
Role based access control allows you (the website owner) to segregate your users into member-level tiers and enable or disable CometChat features for them.
You can segregate users into Premium and Free members levels and then restrict access to certain CometChat features for your free members giving your premium members more superior and personalized experience.
Use Case Scenario: Suppose a realtor wants to list a property on your website, they either have the option to register as a free member and get themselves a simple listing or sign up as a premium member and get a “Chat With Seller” button added to their listing.
The button can be used by potential buyers to connect with sellers via CometChat. The buyer can then chat, negotiate, request pictures, take virtual tours and seek information irrespective of their geographical boundaries.
Sellers can also proactively connect with prospective buyers scrolling through their listing, giving the sellers a chance to build trust and influence the buyers buying decision.
You can also go through our article on Role based access control to learn more about monetization with CometChat.
Credit Deduction
CometChat’s credit deduction feature allows you to deduct credits from the user accounts if and when they use any of CometChat’s features.
Credit Deduction allows you to charge credits for ‘per minute usage’ of various other CometChat features. You can set specific credit values for every feature and whenever a user uses CometChat features these set number of credits are deducted from their account.
Use Case Scenario: Suppose, a buyer wants to connect with the seller via Voice&Video Call to take a virtual tour of a house he is looking to invest in.
The buyer can purchase credits from within the website/app and then spend these credits to connect with the seller. Credits will then be deducted from the buyer’s account as per his usage.
You can also go through our article on Credit deduction to learn more about monetization with CometChat.
Final thoughts
Investing in property is a big decision. Most buyers want a lot of information beforehand.
With a chat integration, sellers, property dealers can improve customer experience and influence the buying decision of buyers as they can connect with them and answer their customer’s query in real time.
In a nutshell, chat integrations can become one of the most significant parts of your real estate website.
Team CometChat
