As the heart of innovation in the new home industry, UTour is excited to participate in the 2024 NAHB International Builders’ Show. This premier event gathers the most influential minds and decision-makers in the new home industry. UTour is returning to the show floor to connect, share and inspire in this unparalleled environment for networking and learning opportunities. Here’s what you need to know to make the most of UTour’s offering at this year’s event.
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UTour’s Showcase at the 2024 NAHB International Builders’ Show
Topics: self-guided tours proptech smart homes best practices new homes sales
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Revolutionizing Home Tours: Harnessing the Power of UTour's AI Assistants
In the dynamic landscape of today's real estate market, blending cutting-edge technology with unparalleled customer service is not just a passing trend, but a groundbreaking revolution. UTour is leading this transformation, providing an innovative, tech-centric approach to self-guided home tours. UTour empowers home shoppers, placing the reins of their journey firmly in their own hands. This flexibility and ease of process redefine the self-touring experience. However, the real game-changer lies in UTour's pioneering AI Assistants.
Topics: self-guided tours ai assistants best practices new homes sales
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Revolutionizing the Model Home Tour Experience with UTour
With the rapid advancements in technology, the traditional ways of touring new homes are undergoing a significant transformation. UTour, the leading self-tour platform for the new home industry, has been at the forefront of this change, offering innovative self-guided home tours to enhance the model home experience.
Topics: self-guided tours faqs best practices new homes sales
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UTour Hits Major Milestones
Since our launch in mid-2020, we have been steadfastly committed to redefining the new home shopping experience with our innovative self-touring solutions. Today, we are excited to share a significant milestone that marks our growth and influence in the new home industry.
Topics: self-guided tours new homes sales news
3 min read
Self-Guided Tours: Empowering Homebuilder Sales Teams, Not Replacing Them
The real estate industry has seen a significant shift in recent years, with technology playing an increasingly important role in the home buying process, accelerated by COVID-19's impact on consumer behavior. UTour’s self-guided home tour platform is one of these technological innovations to disrupt the traditional process to make home shopping easier, smarter, and more efficient. It helps builders sell more homes and allows home shoppers to find their dream homes on their terms.
Topics: self-guided tours faqs best practices new homes sales
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Maximizing Self-Tours: Best Practices for Homebuilders
The new home industry is continually evolving and embracing technology as homebuilders across the nation embrace offering self-guided tours of their models and inventory homes to generate more verified, quality leads, improve the home shopping experience and overcome staffing issues.
Topics: self-guided tours faqs best practices new homes sales
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How OSCs Can Use Self-Tours To Generate More Appointments
According to Zillow New Construction’s Consumer Housing Trends Report 2023, 69% of new construction buyers in 2022 said they prefer to unlock properties with their mobile phones and tour them in person on their own time. And, 68% said they prefer to schedule in-person tours online.
If the majority of new home shoppers desire to self-tour during their first visit to a community, how can an Online Sales Counselor (OSC) assist in ensuring that self-touring leads schedule an onsite sales appointment?
Topics: self-guided tours osc new homes sales lead generation
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How to Integrate UTour Into Your Sales Process
As a builder, you know that when you provide a great homebuying experience, shoppers purchase more homes. You also know that self-guided tours have revolutionized the homebuying experience for builders and shoppers alike.
But with so many responsibilities and such little time, builders often don’t have the bandwidth to launch a new self-guided tour initiative. We are here to help.
UTour makes it easy for builders like you to offer a truly unrivaled on-demand self-guided tour solution to your shoppers to make their homebuying experience less stressful and more enjoyable. Additionally, UTour provides your sales team with incomparable on-demand insights into the interactions shoppers had with your home, arming you with the information to help you sell more homes.
In order to integrate with UTour, homebuilders only need to follow these five simple steps.
1. Add UTour Technology to Your Homes
Select the desired homes available for self-guided tours. Install a Z-Wave lock plus a UTour Hub or compatible control panel (i.e., Qolsys, Honeywell, 2GIG, etc.) in each home. UTour’s responsive and dedicated support staff can guide your team on the installation process, or we can even handle the installation for you for a small additional fee.
2. Promote UTour Homes Through Your Marketing Materials
Through the UTour Builder Portal, you can generate a community-specific or home-specific QR code and URLs to integrate into your marketing and advertising efforts to engage home shoppers via email, search, signage, social media, etc.
3. Prepare Your Team for Upcoming Tours
Select your team members who will receive automated notifications and reports about your self-guided tours and Visitors. These notifications include Tour Scheduled, Tour Reminder, Tour in Progress, Missed Tour, Tour Complete and more.
4. Review Post-Tour Information
Following each self-tour, your team will receive a detailed report in your CRM system and in the UTour Builder Portal that includes but is not limited to:
- Complete, verified contact information
- Tour Duration
- Locations they self-toured
- Interaction with the Self-Tour Assistant, if installed
5. Execute Post-Tour Nurture Campaign
After a self-tour is completed, the home shopper receives automated emails and text notifications with your sales team’s contact information. These notifications encourage them to connect with your team to move forward in the home buying process or if they have any questions about the home they just toured.
Topics: self-guided tours best practices new homes sales
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UTour Welcomes Victor Furnells
Victor Furnells is the latest addition to the UTour team and joins as its new Vice President of Business Development. His leadership and experience will significantly contribute to UTour’s continuing success within the new home industry. Victor received a degree in Communications from the University of Maryland and has served the production home building industry for over a decade, with various market research companies, including tenure with Meyers Research and Zonda. While at Meyers Research and Zonda, Victor led a successful team that surpassed their respective growth goals and was a frequent industry speaker at various home builder conferences and events.
“Adding a team member of Victor’s caliber in terms of experience, achievement and values is a major milestone for our company,” said Tom Nelson, CEO of UTour. “Victor’s incredible work ethic and track record of excellence in B2B sales will greatly contribute to our mission to disrupt the status quo to make new home shopping easier, smarter and more efficient while helping builders sell more homes.”
If you’re interested in meeting with Victor to discuss how self-guided tours can help you sell more homes, while saving money, pleaseschedule a conversation with Victortoday.
Topics: self-guided tours new homes sales news
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Helping Builders Move More Inventory Homes
With economic and scheduling factors working against them, more homebuilders are turning to UTour to help them sell inventory homes.
As we rapidly approach the end of 2022, more and more homebuilders are faced with the unpleasant reality of a high volume of inventory homes available for sale. And while lead volumes remain strong and website activity is high for these builders, ultimately, very few homebuyers are willing to commit to purchasing those homes before the end of the year.
It’s not just the calendar that’s working against homebuilders. The economy isn’t doing them any favors by dealing homebuyers a hand consisting of the highest interest rates in a generation, soaring inflation and the grim specter of a coming recession. Faced with this combination of poor economic factors and a hectic holiday season, many buyers have chosen to sit on the sidelines as they question whether now is the right time to purchase.
Fortunately for both buyers and builders, UTour is here to help.
UTour is an on-demand interactive self-tour experience that homebuilders can implement in their inventory and model homes to provide homebuyers with the convenience they want and their sales team with the data they deserve. Our self-guided tour platform lets skeptical buyers personally explore new homes on their terms in a no-pressure sales environment. Empowering buyers to self-tour homes when they want and how they want makes it more likely that they'll fall in love with that home and make the decision to buy.
For the homebuilder’s sales team, UTour provides high-quality leads containing information, such as first name, last name, email, telephone number, address and the home(s) homebuyers toured. When a self-tour is complete, tour and buyer data will be immediately pushed to a builder’s CRM system, thanks to UTour’s numerous integrations. The immediacy and quality of this UTour data give builders an invaluable tool that helps them properly gauge a potential buyer’s interest, efficiently follow up and effectively close the sale.
While homebuilders still face a number of economic issues that will make it challenging to move inventory homes as we enter 2023, UTour remains a powerful tool to help them close sales. Not only does it provide the critical homebuyer information builders need, but UTour also efficiently delivers this data automatically to their CRM systems. The end result? Homebuilders with fewer inventory homes on their books and homebuyers experiencing an improved life by moving into their dream homes faster than ever.
Would you like to hear more and see how UTour can help your communities? Schedule a private demo with our team today.
