Springs Homes is a real estate company that has embraced technology. From the beginning, we were pioneers in creating and developing ways to use technology in order to provide our clients with the highest level of service possible. We constantly seek the newest and smartest technologies to streamline the home buying, selling, marketing, and closing processes.
We were one of the first real estate offices to offer our buyer clients with updated listings on a daily basis. We were doing this in 1998 long before listing data became ubiquitous online. The common practice in the early days of the internet was to print out listings and snail-mail them to the prospective buyers. Savvy agents were emailing pdf’s to clients but Springs Homes went a step above, by setting up individual websites for buyers and updating the listing data every 24 hours, this was a big deal in 1998 and so was “Saving Private Ryan”.
Today, we use an IDX(Internet Data Exchange) program that we developed in order to keep our listing data up to date throughout the day. We know looking at homes that are under contract, sold or just not available is a big waste of time. This is why we refresh our listing data throughout the day. Buyers can search through available listings, save them to a favorites list which is shared with their Springs Homes agent who can quickly set up the viewing in order to get the buyer in to see the property. In a hot seller’s market, time is of the essence, so we don’t waste time getting available homes in front of our buyer clients.
Our search data tools also allow us to create specialized searches for specific areas or property types. We have found that Colorado Springs and the Pikes Peak Region are popular relocation destinations. Relocating buyers don’t always have a feel for the city or neighborhood that would offer the right fit for their needs and lifestyle. Our niche, neighborhood, sub-area, and feature pages have allowed thousands of homebuyers to find their ideal neighborhood. We have even built a neighborhood matchmaker tool to help buyers hone into the ideal neighborhood.
It’s important for homebuyers to understand the finance or mortgage side of the transaction, this is why we built a user-friendly Mortgage Calculator. This is a great place to start, especially if you are a first time home buyer. The calculator can help you figure out how much you can afford and what your payments will be.
Selling a home is a job we take very seriously, our goal is to show your home or our listings to prospective homebuyers in the best possible light. This is our goal no matter what the size or price of the home. We provide the same level of service for the smallest condominium we list to the largest luxury estate.
Photos have become the new first showing. Buyers make their initial decisions about what homes to actually go tour based on photography. This is why Springs Homes has always been committed to producing the most attractive professional photos possible for all of our listings.
We use techniques like special lighting, HDR and “multiple exposure bracketing” in order to produce appealing images of your home. When it comes to creating interest in a listing, professional photos are a must and cell phone pictures are a big No. No.
At Springs Homes we have been committed to providing virtual tours for all of our listings. For many years these visual tours did a decent job of getting the basic layout of the home across but always left the viewer wanting a little more. The early tours required special plug-ins and hogged up a lot of bandwidth. We always felt we should be doing a better job on virtual tours but the technology just wasn’t there yet. Then we found the Matterport 3-D virtual tour camera.
The Matterport 3-D virtual tour camera and software are exactly what we were looking for. This platform creates a realistic rendering of what the house looks like and how it lays out. The matterport offers multiple views from its iconic “dollhouse” view to a flat overhead look at the floorplan.
We provide all of our listings with a “Matterport 3-D Virtual Tour”, we own the camera and have a professional photographer operating it. The importance of the virtual tour became real during the recent COVID-19 quarantine period. While many brokers were scrambling to find a virtual tour company that could get into their listings to create a virtual tour, we already had them for our listings. We were actually selling and renting homes site unseen based on the virtual tours alone. This saved our clients both time and money during what was an already stressful time.
Our agents have the ability to produce agent guided tours of their listings on video. We use a combination of the matterport virtual walkthrough in conjunction with agent narration in order to point out of the property. Virtual Tours are a great way to get oriented with the layout and flow of a property but the details are often lost. This is what we like the agent video tour, the agent is able to talk about the hidden features or details you would miss out on in a virtual tour.
These videos also help convey the personality of our agents which we find helps to make prospective home buyers more willing to reach out with questions or to set up an appointment to view the house in person.
Another place we have seen technology really improve the quality of the real estate transaction is in the processes of setting up and managing showings and then obtaining feedback from the home buyers after that showing.
Our showing service now allows agents to schedule showings at anytime day or night. Confirmations can be sent via e-mail, text, or phone call. This eliminates so many of the traditional obstacles agents had to deal with in order to show a property. Getting qualified buyers through our listings is our priority and this new system makes it much easier.
Buyer Feedback after a showing is an important tool for home sellers. This feedback provides real-world intelligence about our competition in the real estate market. Our new feedback system sends a feedback survey to the buyer’s agent while they are at the house. When they check their email the survey is right there and easy to complete. The home seller sees the feedback as soon as it’s available. This does create some bruised feelings for the seller, especially if the feedback is negative but our attitude is it’s better to know, ignorance is not bliss when you are selling a home.
Technology has made a huge difference in the way we close our transactions. Title searches and other due diligence tasks are much easier to perform today than they used to be. Electronic Funds Transfer, electronic signatures, and secure portals have changed the landscape of the real estate closing process.
At Springs Homes we intend to stay at the forefront of technology and embrace any new concepts that help improve the quality of the service we provide our clients.
