Real estate has always been a complex business. Some properties can be tricky to buy, sell, and change hands, particularly if you have a long chain, meaning many more stages in the process to trawl through before the property is legally yours. 

However, with the help of modern technology, the process from the start – whether you are a buyer beginning the search for your next home, or a seller researching the best channels to sell your current home through, right down to signing on the dotted line - has become quicker and easier for both buyers and sellers, speeding up the process so that people do not have to wait for months on end before they can move home. 

Fast Home Broadband

In the past, those buying homes would usually start the process by talking to a real estate agent who would listen to their requirements, take note of all of the features the customer wants and with this information, they would then start to look for homes which fit the bill, showcasing them to their clients when they think they’ve found something perfect for them.

But now this process is quite different. People will typically search for their dream home from the comfort of their own sofa, using the internet via their home broadband or WIFI. There are many online real estate websites out there to choose from that make it quick and easy to find properties to your specifications, from filters you can apply on site to narrow your search to having the option of setting up reminders and notifications when a new property matching your parameters comes onto the market. Essentially these websites do the job of a real estate professional, making the research stage more efficient and generally saving those looking for a new home plenty of time and money too.

Digital Viewings

It used to be essential to spend lots of time viewing potential new homes, many property adverts of old would feature a few photos that often missed out key features of the home or were taken from a specific angle making the rooms look different to what they were actually like when viewing. This meant you had time spend a lot of time viewing a whole plethora of properties, many of which looked nothing like the pictures taken and were not suitable to your requirements.

Virtual tours of individual properties has revolutionised this process. 360 degree cameras can be used to take snaps of whole rooms and provide you with house tours and street views, while drones can give you a tour of a property from above. Even smartphone cameras are great for this sort of work, with many of them producing true to life images which will give you a very good idea of how the place actually looks. This means you do not have to waste time on properties that may look appealing in a couple of pictures, but in reality are not right for you at all, meaning you can streamline the list of properties you view and save you a lot of time and energy in the process.

Secure Payments

Spending hundreds of thousands on a single purchase can feel a little bit daunting. Security is of course, essential, when you’re spending this much money, and real estate agents know that their customers need to feel comfortable with their investment. In the past, the real estate agent would act as an third-party escrow agent, holding the money until the keys had been handed over.

Today, you can handle the payment for your home in one very rapid motion. As the keys are handed over, all you  need to do is click a button on your smartphone, and the money you need to send will be transferred into the recipient’s account. This is handled on a secure network, ensuring that nothing can happen to your money along the way, giving both parties peace of mind.

Buyers and sellers worldwide have long had to deal with the challenges of real estate, but the advances in technology has modernised the process and promises to solve many of these issues, with things like broadband giving customers the power to search for themselves, and modern cameras making it much easier for owners to show off what they want to sell and allow buyers to streamline their research, viewing and decision making process.