As an estate agent, time is your most precious asset. It makes sense to spend it wisely on income-producing activities. As an estate agent, you are in the unique position of helping buyers through one of the biggest financial decisions they will ever make – and with this comes stressed-out buyers that will look to you for guidance.
Why not start them out on the right foot and simplify their journey by getting them pre-qualified right at the start? We take a look at some benefits and how it adds credibility to your reputation below.
Benefits
- In real estate, every agent knows that time is money, and pre-qualifying buyers, saves time and eliminates those that cannot afford a particular property.
- It does however open the window of opportunity for matching serious buyers with the right properties, reducing the likelihood of wasting time on unqualified prospects.
- This manages the expectations of the buyer and a sense of comfort in showing them properties within their price point
- By pre-qualifying buyers, the agent can prioritize their time and focus on showing properties to the most qualified prospects, improving overall efficiency.
Credibility
- Pre-qualifying buyers enhance the credibility of the real estate agent and the buyer.
- It empowers both the agent and the buyer to can make informed decisions based on accurate information.
- Knowing a buyer’s financial standing prior to negotiating the terms of a sale can help the agent have a stronger bargaining position.
- Sellers feel confident that agents ‘know’ the people that are being invited into their homes, as they are both financially and personally validated. This helps minimise the risk of encountering persons with malicious intent during property showings.
- Enhancing the safety element for all parties involved creates a sense of trust for the agent, seller, and buyer.
- Implemented correctly, pre-qualifying buyers could change the way viewings or show days are scheduled and conducted
How to implement a smooth pre-qualification workflow
When you receive a new buyer lead, assessing the buyer’s affordability should be part of your onboarding process. This can be done upfront, as part of your website experience or automated, where you help a buyer pre-qualify as soon as they enter your system as a new lead. We take a look at how you can achieve this using the Entegral platforms:
Have the website tools in place to help guide the buyer
Make pre-qualification highly visible throughout your website, including a dedicated landing page (easy to promote too) like we’ve done here (click here for a live demo). Keeping the buyer on your website without them having to click out to a 3rd party bond originator website helps build more trust and gives your more control over your data and client:
Once the buyer is ready to make contact via a lead form on a listing, you can also prompt them to assist with pre-qualification (example here):
Not all your leads will come from your own real estate website, a lot will come from portals. With Base, you can configure these portal leads to be auto-imported. You can then configure a Base Zapier real estate integration automation to send a personalised email as soon as the lead is received:
If this sounds a bit scary and you want more control on which buyers receive your pre-qualification email, you can configure a contact personal tag that can fire an automated email via Zapier as soon as it is added to a contact (similar to our post on automating real estate testimonials). You can then point them to a pre-qualification link on your website:
If you are interested in a fully integrated pre-qualification and bond origination solution for your website check out our home loans product or contact me at homeloans@myproperty.co.za to discuss bond origination for your real estate agency.
