- Like almost everything else in the business, real estate sales are moving online.
- The online auction should be in your toolkit today because vendors and buyers are already demanding it.
Today, every single stage of a property transaction in Australia can be completed online. Many already are; consider online buyer identification, contract management, deposits after a sale, contract signatures, contract exchange, and even online property settlement. SoldOnline exclusively handles perhaps the most important step – the auction and sale itself.
In Future Online Property Sales will be the Norm
In the future, we’ll be looking to expand our platform so that all of these steps can be done on our site, streamlining the process and saving you even more time and money. For now, conducting your auctions with us can help you become familiar with the SoldOnline platform, get on the front foot, and transition easily as the property transaction process becomes increasingly digitized.
If you think the auction is the one thing that will resist this online evolution, be prepared to be unprepared when online auctions become just as common, if not more common, than onsite auctions. No serious industry forecaster expects auctions to escape the shift to transactions online.
Think about it – where do your buyers find your properties? Chances are it’s through an online search, not your neighborhood-letterbox drop. The next step might be a click through to Google Maps, to time the commute to work or check out nearby public transport options. And when buyers want to inspect a property?
They’ll either come to your open at the time they saw on the property search website or email you asking for inspection at another time. Everything but the open inspection is done online – although even that is changing, as buyers who are interstate or too busy to attend opens often hire a surrogate online to film ‘walk-throughs’ of open properties for them!
Digital Natives Will Demand Online Convenience
The fact is, most young people today (and by young, I mean practically everyone below 40, and many who are older than that!) are what are known as digital natives – they’ve grown up with computers, the internet, email, and smartphones.
We’ve all heard the stories explaining that younger generations are often more comfortable texting than talking on the phone or face-to-face. Asking these digital natives not just to attend an onsite auction but find the confidence to place a bid or bids publicly in a high-stress, blink-and-it’s-over traditional auction is putting these buyers far out of their comfort zone. They may find themselves too anxious to place a bid at all, even if they were interested in the property and able to afford to bid.
I built my reputation as an auctioneer on making the real estate auction less stressful for buyers, encouraging them to dive in. But the online auction takes almost all the stress away from buyers (and vendors, too), opening up your properties to a whole new market who might otherwise feel simply too inexperienced or nervous about bidding at a traditional auction.
