You’ve decided to buy a home. It could be your first home, an upgrade, a move to a new area, an investment. Or, you have finally found your dream home — your forever home. Whatever the reason, you begin to feel the emotions of homebuyer bliss envelop you.
The anticipation and excitement are high. You begin searching the property listings in and around locations that you favor. Every photo, video walk-through, and description heightens your endorphins. The adrenaline is rushing through your body and you cannot wait to go looking in person. That is the beginning stages of homebuyer bliss.
On weekends, eager to explore, you get in the car and drive around your ideal neighborhoods. Feeling like children in a candy store, you notice every ‘For Sale’ sign, wondering what’s inside. You absorb as much as you can, scoping out the environment and the home’s proximity to work, schools, and the shops.
Then, you find it, your dream home. It’s in the perfect neighborhood, close to all you need. You decide to connect with the Real Estate Agent. Only, they aren’t available at the moment, and they invite you to the open home. This does not sound favorable. In fact, you immediately plummet into feelings of loss, grief, fear, and annoyance. Why couldn’t the Agent make themselves available for a walk through when you felt ready? Can’t they see you are eager to move forward? Aren’t they as excited as you are about this sale?
At that moment, you lose hope. The experience stops you in your tracks. It isn’t living up to all the enthusiasm and anticipation you felt in the beginning. Now, you are feeling hassled, stressed, ignored, and helpless. This is one of the most important decisions of your life, and you were no longer in control of it.
This was our experience too.
Months went by before we bought our new home. A process we believed should have been much easier, was an experiential nightmare. While we finally did buy the home of our dreams, that special feeling of homebuyer bliss did not return for us. This was the same outcome for others we spoke with. What began as a wonderful adventure turned into a chaotic roller coaster ride.
Agitation and anxiety crept in. Real estate agent’s unavailability and their lack of responsiveness permeated every conversation. The hassle and stress of meeting with agents, on their schedules, left us feeling disenfranchised. We soon realized that we were not in charge of buying our dream home anymore. The agent had displaced us in the picture, ignoring our ideals, and began pushing homes on us that were not our chosen dream home.
This could not be what homebuyer bliss should be! This is not what we imagined buying our dream home would be like. It was awful; it took a long time to overcome the emotional turmoil we endured. Not to forget, that the home we fell in love with, at first sight, became lackluster. The journey stripped away our homebuyer bliss and trying to enjoy our new home became a chore.
Our personal experience led us to research a means to remedy this problem. We sought to find a way to diminish the overwhelm caused by the home buying madness. Our aim was to remove the open home dramas, the sense of helplessness and feeling ignored. No more agents sidelining buyers. Homebuyer bliss is not about them. It is not about their time schedules or their share of the profits. An agent’s sole priority should be you, irrespective of whether you are the buyer or the seller.
Good Service is Good Business, says American Express, consumers will tell others about their [experiences], both good and bad.
Of all the issues, a lack of responsiveness seems to be what buyers and investors have complained about most. It spans many industries, with consumers withdrawing from transactions because of it.
What does customer service look like to you? To us, it means putting you and your dreams FIRST. What you want, when you want it, and how you want it to be. Right?!
The top 4 experiences buyers want from their agent were identified by Listhub as:
- 97% Honesty and Integrity
- 93% Responsiveness
- 90% Knowledge of the market
- 86% Communication skills
Look at the second item on this list. Ranking with a huge 93%, buyers sharing how important Responsiveness is to them. Yes, Responsiveness.
We could see we weren’t the only ones having this experience. There is a huge hole in one of the most essential, not to mention largest, industries in the world. Most people prefer to use the professional services of a real estate agent, whether it be to sell their home or to assist in buying one. Undertaking this yourself is time-consuming. Needless to say, there is a lot to know. There are legalities, statistics, and the all-important ability to negotiate. It makes sense that using a real estate professional would appear easier. However, even other real estate agents could see there were issues within the current system but had no way to remedy them, until now.
That’s why we developed the PingZing app. It’s not just another property listings app; because looking up homes is the easiest part of buying a home. We strive to address the big issues, accommodating what people want in a real estate agent. So, we visualized a way to put buyers back in control. Then expanded this concept to client-centric agents who seek to offer unique and highly valued services.
We are endeavoring to make home buying as effortless as possible, starting with a remedy to ‘responsiveness’. Future releases will see new and exciting tools for both buyers, sellers, and real estate agents.
All this to reignite homebuyer bliss again.
