Do new home products make our buyers look "not so smart?"

In my sales career I have heard it said many times that buyers don’t really know what they want until they see it. My thought is that buyers probably know what they want based on what they know. The problem may really be that they see the new designs, technology, products and services that are changing so rapidly that these new features change their requirements.  All buyers go through the same states or phases regardless of what they buy (different blog topic.) In real estate, because of the massive changes that we as agents/brokers see on an almost  daily basis, we start to think our buyers are  aware of what is now available to them at reasonable (well sometimes) costs. However, when a buyer sees these new features, they can often change their minds about their requirements.

Think about it for a second. Don’t the majority of residential home searches reach at some point a solution where the buyer finds 90% of all their requirements for about 110% of their budget (or somewhere close to that.) A buyer goes back and forth between re-prioritizing their requirements and searching for the right home (two of the states all buyers go through.) This is where we start to think they don’t know what they want.

It is the opening of their minds to these new and sometimes improved features homes can offer that causes buyers to envision a different solution than the one they thought they wanted originally. For example, in Frisco Texas, many master baths in the mid-market no longer have bathtubs. Many have gone to expanded showers. New families are finding it fun to have the bigger showers so they can get their little ones into a shower together to clean them off at once (just one reason I have seen.)

Twenty years ago Corian was pretty hot in the market. Then granite made a bigger splash and now natural quartz like Silestone is big because it doesn’t need to be sealed and also  collects no bacteria. This barely scratches the surface (couldn’t help myself) No matter how well you question a client, sometimes it takes seeing, hearing or feeling a new feature that will change their requirements.

Changing requirements may be a sign that a buyer does not know what they want but often when it involves products that they don’t buy often, they just never knew what was available What’s the difference, it’s all about them anyway.