Home shoppers are embracing virtual reality, saying they believe the technology will make the buying and selling process simpler and quicker, according to a new Coldwell Banker survey. The survey, which was released Monday—a day before the kickoff of CES 2018, the technology industry’s most prominent tradeshow—also shows that smart-home features are at the top of buyers’ wish lists. Coldwell Banker is sponsoring the Smart Home Marketplace at CES for the third consecutive year; the tradeshow runs from Tuesday to Friday in Las Vegas.
Sixty-two percent of the more than 3,000 respondents to Coldwell Banker’s survey say they’d choose a real estate agent who offers VR house tours as a service to their clients over one who does not. Further, the majority of respondents surveyed say they desire to take a VR house tour before seeing a property in person.
Beyond the home-shopping experience, survey respondents also say they are excited about VR applications to help them visualize how furniture would fit into a home.
A Smart Home Adviser
Consumers also say they desire more smart-home technology, and they are looking to you for assistance. Forty-two percent of survey respondents say they would look to their real estate agent to provide suggestions about how staging their home with smart-home products could impact the sale of their home. “Our consumer findings underscore the need for industrywide smart-home education for real estate sales agents,” says Charlie Young, president and CEO of Coldwell Banker Real Estate.
The smart-home products home buyers say they most prefer to already be installed in a home are:
- Smart thermostat: 77%
- Smart fire detector: 75%
- Smart carbon monoxide detector: 70%
- Smart camera: 66%
- Smart lock: 63%
- Smart lighting system: 63%
“It’s crucial that the real estate industry stays on the cutting edge of technology,” says David Marine, senior vice president of marketing at Coldwell Banker. “From virtual reality to smart-home tech, consumers are now interacting with these technologies in different capacities and expect the same when working with a real estate professional.”
—Melissa Dittmann Tracey, REALTOR® Magazine
