In response to the coronavirus market downturn, real estate technology company Chime has released live-streaming tools to assist users in broadcasting remote home tours and open houses.
The product’s release was pushed up in response to the sudden, unprecedented business conditions.
Chime’s integration of Facebook Live and YouTube Live will work in unison with a new series of landing page templates developed to create a uniform, branded environment around each home tour or streamed open house.
Links to each live event can be shared via typical methods from Chime, such as text or email.
In addition to its CRM, Chime offers real estate teams, brokers and agents a slew of web marketing solutions, such as custom IDX websites, lead capture tools, web advertising and direct mail.
Chime users need to first set up accounts on either platform for the use of livestreaming, which Chime has detailed on its website.
The company uses “blocks” to designate content insertions on web pages, and it has developed specific versions for both platforms.
Chime stated in a press release that its new tools were “specifically designed to help agents continue to best serve their clients while respecting the mandate for social distancing.”
Steve Wener of eXp Realty on San Diego is familiar with Facebook Live, having used it often before the COVID-19 outbreak, but told Inman in a phone call that current market conditions are retraining people to a new experience.
Steven Wener of eXp Realty San Diego
“We’re still providing a service, and part of that is to build rapport; even if it’s virtual, people are still getting an experience,” he said. “We’ve never had to focus on it because of the liberties we’ve had in face-to-face showings.”
Wener also sees live tours as the best opportunity the market has right now to sustain a sense of normalcy.
Mike McGowan, Chime’s vice president of sales, said in the press release that his team had to jump ahead on its feature roadmap but that the market situation demanded it.
“Given the COVID-19 pandemic, our development team recognized a significant gap in how the real estate industry could engage with prospects and quickly delivered new livestreaming functionality to help hard-working agents,” he said.
The company has assembled a library of resources to assist agents throughout the outbreak.
View all of Inman’s coronavirus coverage here, and check out all of our content related to running your business here.
Have a technology product you would like to discuss? Email Craig Rowe
Craig C. Rowe started in commercial real estate at the dawn of the dot-com boom, helping an array of commercial real estate companies fortify their online presence and analyze internal software decisions. He now helps agents with technology decisions and marketing through reviewing software and tech for Inman. He lives near Lake Tahoe in the northern Sierra Nevada of California.
