In today’s competitive housing market, getting pre-qualified is all but mandatory for prospective buyers to be taken seriously. It’s a requirement to put in an offer on a house, and in some cases, it is required even just to schedule a viewing for a home.
In fact, some real estate agents will go as far as refusing to deal with buyers who haven’t yet gone through the pre-qualification process. The demands on their time are simply too great otherwise.
Yet despite this, the vast majority of first-time home buyers aren’t even familiar with the pre-qualification process, much less coming prepared with a pre-qualification letter in hand when looking to view homes or make an offer. The net result is that real estate agents end up spending a significant amount of time speaking with prospective home buyers that aren’t familiar with the pre-qualification process, routing them to the same place time and again instead of being able to begin working with them immediately.
Today’s Tools for Educating Clients on How to Pre-Qualify for a Mortgage
Existing methods of educating clients on how to get pre-qualified are helpful, but they aren’t enough. Today, real estate agents use all of the following tactics to point would-be home buyers in the right direction:
- A “Get Pre-qualified” page on their website. Many agents will dedicate an entire page on their website to educate prospects on where to go and what to do to get pre-qualified.
- Email signatures. Another common practice is to include a link to either the “How to Get Pre-Qualified” web page mentioned above, or another reputable site that walks people through the process.
- Auto-responder emails. For those agents who use an auto-responder to reply to prospects who reach out via a contact form, many opt to include directions on how to get pre-qualified right in the body of that email.
- Directly within listings. Listing agents will also commonly include a line about requiring buyers to come pre-qualified directly within the listing as a reminder to those who view it.
The challenge is that, despite all of these efforts, buyers still aren’t going through the pre-qualification process when they should be. They’re continuing to knock on agents’ doors without a pre-qualification letter in hand, taking up valuable time that could otherwise be spent closing deals.
But what if these weren’t the only options for educating and pre-qualifying clients?
What if there was another, better way of helping buyers get purchase-ready?
Introducing an Automated Mortgage Pre-Qualification Tool:
- Gather pre-approval information
- Automatically route leads to a loan officer of your choice
- Politely reject unqualified leads and redirect them elsewhere
Of course, you don’t have to imagine it – The Real Estate Bot does all of these things for you. It will prompt the client on what information they need to prepare to complete the process (often a source of back-and-forth between agents and buyers). It provides agents with the flexibility to set up automatic redirects to whichever loan officer they prefer, saving valuable time that would otherwise be spent responding to client emails and voicemails.
And by politely rejecting unqualified candidates, it saves agents the time and trouble of sending such an email themselves. This allows the real estate agent to save face and possibly even bring the buyer back as a qualified lead sometime in the future!
Pre-qualifying prospects are just one of many benefits of using The Real Estate Bot, though; the reality is that the tool offers much, much more:
1. Automatic, Instantaneous Home Valuations
Another way the Real Estate Bot saves you time and money is by providing automatic home valuations to prospective sellers. Users simply enter their street address and ZIP code to receive an immediate result that shows their home’s estimated value. Forget the back-and-forth of dealing with unrealistic expectations; that’s now a thing of the past.
2. Pre-Qualify Prospective Sellers
The Real Estate Bot doesn’t just pre-qualify prospective buyers; it does the same for prospective sellers, too. Users can answer a few quick questions about the home they wish to list, and upon completion, they will either be directed to speak to you as a real estate agent or politely rejected and redirected due to a lack of fit. Of course, you as the agent have full control over the criteria by which prospects are accepted or rejected.
If you’d like to try a free demo of the product, you can do so by clicking here.
3. Showcase Your Listings
Prospects don’t even need to leave the Messenger chat to scroll through your active listings. The Real Estate Bot allows you to provide a virtual tour for each listing with dynamic cards that people can sort through and request more information on. You’ll save even more time finding the right house for your clients when they jump-start the process themselves!
If you have no active listings on the go, users can instead fill out a brief form to let you know exactly what they’re interested in.
4. Automated Scheduling
Once the tool has determined that a prospective buyer or seller meets the criteria you specified, it will show scheduling options and allow them to schedule a meeting with you at a time that works for both parties.
The bottom line is that the Real Estate Bot puts time back into your calendar, and money back into your wallet. In fact, one of our satisfied clients even mentioned that she was able to work less while still making more money, thanks to the tool!
Conclusion
As a real estate agent, your time is valuable, and any task that demands time out of your schedule takes away from your ability to close deals. The Real Estate Bot helps give you that time back, allowing you to automate and streamline your prospecting efforts so you can focus on doing what you do best: closing the deal.
If you’d like to try a free demo of the product, you can do so by clicking here.
Get ready to spend less time educating prospects on how to get pre-qualified, and more time helping them sell their existing home to move into the home of their dreams. Read More Optimize Your Shopping Website
