With the launch of Coldwell Banker’s First-Time Home Buyers Resource Center, agents can help clients find homes easier. The Resource Center includes videos, articles, and other tools to guide new buyers through the real estate search process.
Coldwell Banker conducted a recent survey of 300 buyers who had purchased a first home within the last year, and found that 93 percent of those surveyed considered online tools extremely helpful in locating detailed information about prospective homes. And, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), new buyers accounted for half of the market’s home sales in 2010.
The new web portal, which will be updated regularly and featured on ColdwellBanker.com, will include multiple approaches to searching for homes and offer property recommendations based on searches. It will include video tips on selecting a home, the moving process, and renovating and decorating your new space. Also available will be informative articles on choosing a real estate agent, differentiating between must-haves and wish-list items, and determining what is affordable and what isn’t.
As affordability can often be an issue with first-time buyers, the Center will provide such tools as a mortgage calculator and an affordability radar which breaks listing prices down into monthly payments, depending on the chosen mortgage rate.
“Buying your first home is exciting but it can also be overwhelming, so we created this section for first-time homebuyers to simplify the steps toward home ownership, and make the process easier and enjoyable,” said Kathy Kalnes, regional vice president of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage. “Today, first-time homebuyers recognize that if they have the financial wherewithal, now is a smart time to buy a home. The First-Time Home Buyers Resource Center helps give them the confidence to enter the real estate market and gain valuable insight so they can best work with their agent.”
The First-Time Home Buyers Resource Center is not the first of Coldwell Banker’s online innovations. ColdwellBanker.com currently features BlueScape, a service which allows buyers to select a home based on feelings and emotions: clients select images that they like and images that they dislike, and the application provides suggestions based on the categorization of the images. Coldwell Banker also provides a lifestyle search, which allows clients to choose the elements of a home and community that are most important to them.
The Coldwell Banker brand is best known for creating innovative customer services. Coldwell Banker was the first national real estate brand to offer a mobile service for smart phones, and the first to utilize video in real estate listing to its full extent with The Coldwell Banker On Location SM YouTube station.