Riding the IT Wave

 

Written by

Simon Bradbury, Fine & Country Cambridgeshire.

Tel: 0845 603 2825 or visit: www.fineandcountry.com

I think it’s fair to say that estate agency as an industry isn’t renowned for being cutting edge in many aspects of its business.  So that’s why I’m quietly impressed at how we at Fine & Country are embracing some of the new technologies and social trends that are around at the moment.

Take QR codes for example – our latest innovation. You may have seen them on adverts in the media – SKY is particularly keen on using them to promote new TV programmes. For those of you unfamiliar with them, they are a new bar-code style logo which, when photographed with the appropriate ‘app’, takes the user to a specific web site; so it links off- line media such as media adverts to online information. Within a minute of scanning a QR code of a property, our customers can now be looking at a videoette (short animated film) of that particular home. How great is that! These films really bring the property to life and are much more interesting than ploughing through the property spec.  The next step will be to put them on the sales boards so customers passing a house they like can quickly be viewing that interior of that property on their mobile phone. The feedback from our customers has been very encouraging so we are gradually rolling them out onto all our marketing materials.

With so many people having access to android style mobile phones such as Blackberries and iPhones we thought it was important to have an iPhone app so we introduced that a few months ago. Our app makes browsing for a property effortless. I love the fact that people can be choosing their next home whilst sitting in the pub – beats trawling around the various high street agents!

Social media has also been an interesting area and I am told that 57% of internet users now use a social network. We have set up a Facebook (www.facebook.com/FineandCountry) and Twitter (http://twitter.com/FineandCountry)accounts for our business; the beauty of this for people selling their property is that they can share their property details with their friends, so before you know it their property has gone viral. What better way to get the details of a property out there than amongst a vendor’s peer group, who we assume will have a similar interests and possibly similar budgets.

I am sure there are other technologies that we could be using so I would be interested to hear about other surfers out there riding an IT wave that I haven’t thought about!