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The Keller Williams consumer-facing mobile app had its first look at Inman Connect New York, about a month before the industry was rattled by a global pandemic.
Since then, national stay-at-home orders have adjusted the way real estate agents are interacting with buyers and sellers and learning how to show properties via mobile devices and laptops is a big part of that.
As part of its response, and as part of the app’s staged rollout, the popular franchise has introduced a feature to allow prospective buyers to schedule virtual home tours.
The “Live Video” option, under “Schedule Video Tour,” allows the user to select a time, date and preferred video platform as well as highlight specific home amenities they’d like to see.
It’s up to the agent to arrange or produce the tour using whatever third-party software and devices with which they’re most comfortable.
Keller Williams doesn’t have a proprietary virtual tour product or official partner. Yet.
“We took an iterative approach,” said Jessica Groff, product director at Keller Williams, “And we wanted to be able to respond to whatever the market threw at our regions, market centers, and agents.”
Thus, the company will use data collected from consumers to later move forward on how best to uniformly address the actual production of video tours, live open houses, and similar virtual listing events. Groff said the company is examining a number of existing options for video conferencing platforms.
“A lot consumers don’t know that live virtual tours are an option, and we know that there are different levels of comfort throughout the country,” Groff said. “So the first thing we wanted to do was surface to the consumer that it is an option.”
Other updates to the KW app include improved listing photo views, and the ability to browse available properties in an agent’s “featured collection.”
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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.
