Using Digital Tools to Disrupt the Status Quo and Reinvent Real Estate

K Real Estate in Motueka is not your typical real estate agency. They’re a certified climate positive business, have a shared commission structure, are completely paperless, and don’t hold open homes. Yep, you read that right - a real estate agency that doesn’t hold open homes.

Instead, Director Roar Kristofferson relies on technology to do the heavy lifting, using flexible, scalable solutions like iSMS and VoIP. “We actually sat down and decided to change how we were doing things,” Roar explains. “Most of the technology available to businesses is not rocket science; it’s a case of being willing to try.”

Their iSMS (text messaging) solution has played a huge part in their success.

“One of the key things with iSMS is that the open rate is much, much higher than with emails,” says Roar. “People won’t wait until the evening to open a text; they’ll open it pretty much right away.”

The instant reach of iSMS is what allowed K Real Estate to launch a ‘VIP service’, whereby keen buyers can opt in to receive text alerts when the agency lists a property – even before it goes onto the market. “They’ll get a text often before we even have photos of the property,” explains Roar, “and if they want to learn more, they can reply via text and we’ll have a salesperson contact them. It’s a way for us to provide our agents with really specific and hyper-targeted, qualified leads."

Their strategy is paying off, not only for them but for their clients as well. “It’s something we’re getting amazing feedback on from buyers, and it’s led to a number of sales already,” says Roar. He tells the story of one buyer in Mapua that had recently missed out on a property, but when K Real Estate listed another just down the road, that buyer – who had opted into the iSMS service – received a text before it even went to market. “They viewed it that day, went under contract that day, and it was sold within three or four days,” recounts Roar.

iSMS has also enabled them to achieve their goals of going paperless and not holding open homes by marketing to the right people, at the right time. After analysing their data, Roar found that 95% of their sales came from private viewings, and they would reach that other 5% with iSMS to their database anyway. The direct, individual communication enabled by iSMS means Roar and his team can work with the right buyers for the right properties straight away, instead of wasting time on traditional open homes.

“We tripled our business in one year,” says Roar. “Rather than the traditional open homes where you get a lot of people coming through that are never going to buy, we were concentrating on people that actually had money and were ready.”

It’s easy to hear how passionate Roar is about digital tools that can transform the way his company works. You can listen to more of his insights here - they may just inspire you, too!

To learn more about how iSMS and digital tools can work for your unique needs, sing out to Voyager’s business experts for a chat at [email protected] or on 0800 4 SPEED.