Even recently as a few decades ago, the home-buying process was time-consuming and complicated. If you were attempting to find that perfect property on your own, you’d spend countless hours driving around, looking for “For Sale” signs. Maybe you’d look in local real estate listing guides and other print materials.
Or, you could have a real estate agent do a lot of this legwork for you. They’d talk about your needs, present you with a list of options, and you’d narrow the endless possibilities down to a few. But you could still only see two or three properties in a day – extending the time it would likely take you to locate just the right one.
Flash forward to today, and you don’t even need to physically be present in a home to know it’s the right one for you. As is true with almost every industry you can name, technology has revolutionized how we buy and sell homes. Or at least, it has the potential to if you know what resources are available to you and how to properly take advantage of them.
Real Estate Websites and Apps
Truly, one of the more important advancements in the real estate industry since the turn of the century has been the emergence of various real estate websites and apps. In an era that has long since ended, only specialized individuals could ever hope to possess the knowledge necessary to easily and effectively execute a real estate transaction.
Now, services like Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com, and Redfin put all the information and data points you need at your fingertips. Not only do they offer listings, but many also feature virtual tours and even filters that you can use to target your search more precisely than ever before.
Skip Tracing Services
On the subject of information, real estate skip-tracing services have emerged as a valuable tool for discovering potential properties. These services use various data sources, like public databases, to discover off-market properties that may be a great opportunity waiting to be capitalized on. Using these tools, buyers can find contact information for potential sellers who haven’t officially listed. That way, you can get in and make an offer before anyone else even has a chance to consider it.
Mortgage Pre-Approval Apps
One of the major pain points for many home buyers in the past has been the complexity and time-consuming process. This was especially true when it came to getting approved for a mortgage, which could instantly invalidate all the hard work and time you invested by suddenly making a specific home outside your price range.
Now, apps like Rocket Mortgage and Better.com offer fast and easy online pre-approvals. This gives you the edge as a buyer as you know exactly what you’re dealing with, and you come into a transaction armed with the resources you need to help things go as smoothly as possible for all parties.
Interactive Home Inspection Apps
One of the most essential parts of the home-buying process is and will always be hiring a home inspector for standard inspections and preventative safety measures like radon testing. Here, you hire a professional to go through the entire property with a fine-toothed comb, looking for anything potentially dangerous or that you can use as leverage to get the best possible price out of a buyer. This, too, is one of those parts of the process that has been historically tedious and time-consuming.
Now, interactive home inspection apps like Home Inspector Pro have changed the game. They allow inspectors to document the inspection process and record any potential issues with the property in real time. Buyers no longer must wait weeks for someone to come to the house for their inspection, only to wait a few more weeks to prepare their report. Everything is available instantly, so you can operate with the confidence that comes with knowing you have the most complete picture to work from.
Digital Document Management
Finally, we arrive at the digital document management process, which has dramatically streamlined the race to the finish line for most real estate transactions.
First-time homebuyers don’t realize just how much documentation is required until they’re well into the thick of it. From a certain perspective, it makes sense – this is one of the biggest financial investments that you’ll ever make in your life, after all.
In the modern era, secure platforms like DocuSign facilitate electronic signatures and document sharing in seconds. Paperwork preparation and distribution are dramatically streamlined during closing, which helps things speed along as quickly as possible and certainly far faster than would have been possible even a decade ago.
Overall, the main theme of how technology has revolutionized the home-buying process is control. Even though you were the one spending a lot of money to make one of the biggest financial investments of your entire life, historically, you’ve always had the least amount of control over the process itself.
Now, that has changed. Resources like interactive home inspection apps and skip tracing services give you more actionable information to work from than ever before, virtually guaranteeing that you’ll be able to make the right decision at the right time.
But the exciting thing is that technology will continue to advance, as it always does. Right now, people are working on innovations that will change how we buy homes again in ways that we can’t even conceive of right now. Those tech-savvy buyers who stay up-to-date on all the latest trends will be in an excellent position to take full advantage of that. Those who don’t will find themselves left behind.