New homes already have a lengthy sales funnel. Couple this with the unique expectations of each home shopper and you get a dynamic where potential issues can easily arise if not careful. While hurdles in the sales process are common, they are also avoidable. By implementing additional protocol ahead of time, you can ensure a more positive overall experience — both for your home shoppers and your sales team.

From start to finish, selling a new home is a very involved process. Home shoppers expect guidance and reassurance, but most importantly they want it to be on their terms. This can be difficult to navigate and there are several common pitfalls over the course of a new home journey. But if you know the problem ahead of time and implement a scalable, repeatable solution then you can avoid these potential conflicts.

There are few sales cycles more arduous than that of new homes. Due to the nature of such a large-scale investment, purchasing a new home requires an extensive courting process. Over the course of this journey, there are inevitably bumps along the road. Luckily, there are tools at your disposal to help overcome these obstacles and give your home shoppers the experience they crave.

Technological innovations are always on the rise, and they continue to grow in popularity through the years. What once were features used exclusively on the most advanced homes are becoming more accessible to the masses today. This shift indicates that while these features were historically considered luxury upgrades, they are now becoming expectations for modern home shoppers. But is it worth it for you to build smart homes? Yes — and not just to keep your homebuyers happy — the technology can help you manage the historic lead volumes during the sales process. Here’s how.

On the heels of noted achievements at The Nationals earlier this year, UTour continues its win streak at the Maryland Building Industry Association’s 2020 MAX Awards. The Maryland Awards of Excellence program recognizes outstanding accomplishments within the homebuilding industry. In competition with some of the best and brightest, UTour pulled away to take home two top awards in the Marketing category.

The current new home buying process is outdated and full of friction points that cause many potential home buyers to abandon their new home search or purchase a resale home. Driven by COVID-19’s lasting impact on consumer behavior, the importance of a “self-service” and “no-contact” experience makes self-guided home tours a critical sales tool for home builders.

With some of the biggest names in home building and resale homes alike adopting self-guided home tours, it’s clear that self-service solutions are quickly becoming the norm for how people shop for a home. Today, builders across North America are allowing shoppers to self-tour their models and inventory homes to great acclaim. But — like with anything in customer service — along with every solution, a new challenge is sure to emerge. How can a builder ensure each home shopper receives a consistent, quality experience during the self-guided tour? How can a builder control the flow of information that their shoppers are receiving as they go about their tour unassisted?

When the nation was thrust into social distancing in early 2020, few homebuilders were prepared. The home shopping experience that consumers demand had already begun to shift, but COVID-19 and the necessity of social distancing accelerated the process.

Chances are, if you’re in the homebuilding industry, the concept of self-guided tours has crossed your desk at some point in the last year. It might’ve gone by different names — unattended access, or maybe on-demand tours, but they all represent the ability to provide your shoppers a way to schedule a tour online and then visit a community and tour their home of choice without having to interact with a salesperson first. It’s home touring on their command and on their time, and the data shows that it is an incredibly successful supplement to help builders bring more qualified, motivated home buyers to the table.

Toward the end of 2020, we held a webinar with our partners at BDX to answer all the questions we were receiving about how self-guided tours work. We wanted to provide access to the recording of this Q&A session for those who are just learning about UTour for the first time. If you’ve got 30 minutes, we couldn’t recommend it enough. Read on below to get a full picture of all the answers you’ll receive while watching the webinar.