According to a 2014 real estate tech trends report, compiled by Properties Online, 90% of potential homebuyers look for a new house online. Therefore, your website is an invaluable tool in helping you to attract and retain clients. Your site should help potential buyers search for their dream home, review local market data, and get answers to some of their burning questions.
For overseas buyers in particular, your website should provide a range of tools, advice and guidance that can help you move ahead of your competitors. International clients have additional needs and concerns compared to your average domestic buyer, e.g. understanding the U.S. real estate system, knowing the most cost-effective means of making international payments and which realtors provide a reliable and efficient service.
To successfully market real estate to international clients, you need to make them feel comfortable; to show your prospects that they can trust you and you know and understand their needs. Purchasing a home abroad can be a stressful process. Making your prospective international clients feel “at home” on your website can help in forging a successful relationship with them. For example, language-specific landing pages can help to gain trust and provide useful, relevant information in a clear and understandable way.
Having arrived on your website, you might consider providing overseas buyers with access to useful tools to assist them in their property search. Ensuring they won’t have to leave your website to find the answers they need on a competitors’ site. For example, installing a widget in the form of a currency converter will enable them to calculate how much properties are worth in their native currency; and offering an enquiry form, detailing their specific foreign exchange requirement and resulting questions, will help them gain valuable information about their purchase.
Creating and posting relevant, informative, up to date content on your website is a great way to assist overseas buyers and gain their trust. For example, you can help allay any concerns over a lack of knowledge around the workings of the U.S. real estate market, by providing educational posts on the subject, together with top tips articles for overseas buyers in the U.S. And with overseas buyers needing to make large international money transfers to fund their property purchase, you may also choose to produce some content around the benefits of using a foreign exchange specialist, compared to a bank. Explaining how they can not only offer bank-beating exchange rates and low transfer fees, they also provide a range of specialist tools to help protect their customers from negative exchange rate movements – saving their client’s money on their international payments.
For more information visit http://www.moneycorp.com/usa.
