Wazzup Pilipinas!
Data show that the majority of the Philippines’ approximately 40 million Internet users are 30 years and younger, the same people who are either planning to rent an apartment or purchase their first home.
This presents an unusual predicament to real estate brokers. As most of them are very used to transacting with older, less tech-savvy customers, they may not have the selling chops and necessary patience to deal with millennials.
With this, global property portal Lamudi Philippines dishes out five tips for capturing and dealing with the millennial homebuyer.
1. Give Them More Options
In the advent of the Internet, too much information is a good thing, especially in real estate, and millennial customers embrace this with glee. Nowadays, a typical online customer would have looked at least 10 websites before making an inquiry, and that gives them a lot of power over the purchase. As information is literally at the fingertips of your young would-be customers, it would be better to offer them as many options as you can.
2. Whet Their Appetite by Giving Showing Them Lots of Photos
In today’s world of Instagram and Pinterest, younger online customers are better captured through lots of photos. Hence, brokers who are using the same generic image for their online listings are doing themselves a disservice. A study published in the Journal of Real Estate Research show that almost all users of real estate sites look at a listing’s main photo for 20 seconds, if it is not eye-catching enough, the battle is lost before it even begins.
3. Young Online Customers Want Answers—Now
Dubbed “micromoments” or “zero moment of truth” by Google, young online customers instinctively check their device, usually a smartphone, for everything they want to get answered right now. That means if they have a query about how land titles are transferred in the Philippines, or if they need to pay capital gains tax if they sell their primary home, they would type these questions in a search engine. The website (and the entrepreneur behind that website) who provides answers to their questions wins the game.
4. Respond to Them Quickly
Call if the first-mover advantage. The real estate broker who replies the quickest gets instant recognition and loyalty from a millennial customer. In fact, even though an online customer is going price shopping over the Internet, a sense of “loyalty” drives them back to the vendor who replied to them first. By initially providing consumers with a prompt service, smart brokers are able to create strong social and psychological bonds that tend to override competing offers.
5. Connect with Them Through Multiple Channels
They say that today’s young customers do not use their phones to make calls, so for brokers who are so used to talking to clients over the phone, this presents a unique challenge. To better serve millennials, brokers should connect with them via multiple channels, including social media and instant messaging apps. However, do ensure to be not too intrusive, as people do not like being stalked. Instead, update them every now and then by sharing your latest listings or interesting articles about real estate.
Ross is known as the Pambansang Blogger ng Pilipinas - An Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Professional by profession and a Social Media Evangelist by heart.
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