How I sold a house using Skype (tm)
My story about how I used Skype with clients that live 14 hours away.
Mr. & Mrs. New Home Buyer closed on their new home and the wife saw it (live) for the first time 15 minutes before closing. Yes, they are still married and she loves the house!
I consider myself to be a pretty good computer nerd, but I never had the need to use Skype until I met Mr. & Mrs. New Home Buyer. Mr. & Mrs. New Home Buyer lived out west, they had sold their home and wanted to move somewhere with definite seasons and wanted to move in 30 days. Mr. & Mrs. New Home Buyer decided Virginia was where they wanted to move. They found my team online and I was thrilled. After a couple of conversations, customized MLS search set up, recommendations marked, Mr. Buyer, Mrs. Buyer and 2 year old daughter were coming to see a few homes we had selected in their range. Great...then they started to look at flights, rental cars, hotels...etc..Change of plans. Only Mr. Buyer was coming. Not so, Great! How am I going to have them in their new home in 30 days? I knew Mr. Buyer and his wife currently use Skype to keep in touch with extended family and had the software installed on their home computer.
Two days later Mr. Buyer flew into Richmond. We had three days to see 30 homes. Mission accomplished, we saw most of them and found the "one." Now, here is where we decided to think outside the box! I had Skype installed on my laptop and we decided to call Mrs. Buyer using Skype. (At the time, I was thinking...I hope this works) I carried my computer with web camera installed all over the house Mr Buyer loved. Wow, Mrs. Buyer was so excited! Mrs. Buyer was able to see what the view was of her back yard from the kitchen window, what the neighbors homes looked like from the front porch, the amount of space in the 3rd floor that was unfinished, the HUGE master bedroom closet (the pictures from the MLS did not capture.) She knew it was the house for her. We submitted an offer and after a few counteroffers Mr. & Mrs. New Home Buyer had a ratified contract! Then we did the home inspection the same way. The inspector went over the summary and I walked around the computer and showed Mr. & Mrs. New Home Buyer the couple of items the inspector found. They closed on time! Mrs. Buyer and her daughter loved the house Mr. Buyer picked.
The Real Estate Market is changing and so are our client's expectations. I can't wait to see what is next!
I would love to know what you are doing with technology! Please share a success story and we can learn together.
All the Best,
Jennifer James
(Real Estate/ Computer Nerd)
Hometown Realty
Comments(1)