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This week, Coldwell Banker is attending the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show (CES). This marks our third year sponsoring the Smart Home Marketplace within the world’s biggest tech show – and we’re unveiling our annual Smart Home Marketplace survey, which has been asking consumers about the hottest tech trends for three years running.
This year, we found that technology is helping consumers feel more comfortable at home, even before they actually buy a home.
Virtual Reality or Virtual Real-ty?
Today, many agents are actually using virtual reality (VR) imaging to take a VR video of a home to show prospective buyers a listing through a VR headset, like Samsung’s Gear VR. These VR tours are the real deal – they give you the ability to look at every corner of a home in so much detail that you’ll actually feel like you’re there.
Coldwell Banker currently has hundreds of homes listed online with VR tours, so we wanted to explore how consumers felt about VR. We were blown away – our survey found that 77% of Americans would love to take a VR tour of a prospective home before actually visiting it. It’s clear that VR is quickly catching up to video – in fact, our survey found that that VR was a mere seven percentage points behind video as consumers’ favorite way to visit prospective homes.
So what does this mean for the future of real estate? For starters, 62% of Americans would be more likely to choose a real estate agent who offered VR house tour capabilities over an agent who did not, so its clear that agents should familiarize themselves with VR to win listings and market them effectively.
VR can help prospective buyers see listings via a VR headset from virtually anywhere (no pun intended). But once homebuyers find “the one”, the tech battle isn’t over – consumers are still hungry for top tech installed inside their homes as well!
Smart from the Start
Our survey asked consumers whether they were interested in having smart home features pre-installed in a home, what kind of products they already own and which products Americans plan to purchase in 2018.
Three in four prospective homeowners want smart thermostats and smart fire detectors pre-installed in a home if purchasing a home in the next year. Over two-thirds of prospective homebuyers want smart carbon monoxide alarms and smart security cameras pre-installed in a new home this year.
Of course, many Americans already own these products – in fact, our survey found that the amount of Americans who already own smart home devices has grown by 33% since this time last year. When we ranked which smart home products people already own versus what they plan to purchase in 2018, we found they stacked up similarly. For example, smart entertainment was the top product category already owned by Americans, and it was also the top category sought after by people planning to purchase smart home products in 2018.
There is much, much more than we can unpack from our survey, so be sure to check out our full survey results and press release for more info! Also, make sure you visit Blue Matter throughout the month to catch up on the team’s adventures at CES 2018 and learn more about how technology is changing the real estate game!
If you’re already affiliated with Coldwell Banker and want to learn more about our Smart Home initiative, visit CB Exchange and search “Smart Home.”
If you would like to know what Coldwell Banker agents have access to, head to coldwellbanker.com/join and explore the possibilities of moving your business to Coldwell Banker.
