The pandemic of 2020-21 has changed many things about daily life, not the least of which is how we shop for real estate.
Will we ever return to the days of casually shopping for homes through in-person tours, with buyers wandering through 8-10 homes in a day? It’s hard to say, but we do know that right now buyers are still looking at lots of homes. The change is that they’re doing it digitally.
Fortunately, the technology world has stepped up to provide multiple ways in which buyers can view a home. With a 3D home tour, you can take a walk through the rooms virtually – looking up, down, and around. Some agents also take buyers on video tours remotely, giving them even more control. At the very minimum, home listings today have dozens if not hundreds of photos available for shoppers to click through.
So what’s missing from this rich visual imagery of a home? If you thought we might say “Floor Plans”, you were right. Real estate listings that rely heavily on digital tours can benefit greatly an easy-to-interpret map of the surroundings, aka a floor plan. Think about it – going through a house without physically putting your feet on the ground gives you no context about how the rooms are laid out. And what’s faster – checking to see if there’s a ground-floor bathroom by flipping through all the photos again, or simply glancing at the floor plan?
Buyers agree with us. In a 2020 National Association of Realtors report, floor plans were ranked higher than virtual tours and videos by buyers when asked which visual tools are most useful. Over half of those surveyed stated that floor plans are “very useful” in shopping for homes.
Yet, in an informal check of homes listed in Portland in May 2021, only 20% of agent-listed homes included a floor plan, and even fewer on the For Sale by Owner side.
Floor plans tell a story about the home and give buyers a glimpse into what it might be like to live in the space. Some of the words lifted from home listing descriptions themselves – “open, bright space”; “private master bedroom”; “indoor-outdoor living with sliding doors” – hint at a great floor plan, but even then, an actual, 2-dimensional floor plan is often not included.
So how does one create a floor plan? You can spend an hour or two wandering around the house with a tape measure, getting out the graph paper and attempting to make a semi-accurate sketch of the rooms with all their windows, doors and openings. Unfortunately, scanned drawings simply do not appeal visually and will be difficult for buyers to interpret. A better option is to click on over to our Floor Plans page. We use precision laser measurements and CAD software (the same software used by architects to design homes) to create beautiful, simple floor plans that tell your home’s story in one glance.
Don’t leave buyers in the dark about your home’s floor plan – fill them in! Schedule your Floor Plan today.