Use A Real Estate API To Build Trust With Clients And Overcome Negative Perceptions

A Real Estate API with a huge reservoir of hyper-local market data can be helpful to brokers to establish an overall sense of trustworthiness for their firm.

Apparently this is a challenge for real estate brokers and agents with consumers today.

According to a recent Gallup Poll, agents are on the cusp when it comes to how they rank among professionals for honesty and ethical standards.

A Gallup Poll from Dec. 3, 2018 ranked several professions for honesty and ethics. Here are the findings for Real Estate Agents:

• Very High – 2%
• High – 23%
• Average – 54%
• Low – 15%
• Very Low – 4%

Meanwhile, the group that ranked at the top for honesty and ethics was Nurses.

This was followed by:

• Medical Doctors
• Pharmacists
• High School Teachers
• Police Officers
• Accountants
• Funeral Directors
• Clergy
• Journalists
• Building Contractors
• Bankers
• Ranking below Real Estate Agents were:
• Labor Union Leaders
• Lawyers
• Business Executives
• Stockbrokers
• Advertising Executives
• Telemarketers
• Car Salespeople
• Members of Congress

Real Estate API provides facts, not hype

Now, it’s important to point out most people find Real Estate Agents honest and trustworthy. The small percentage of people that don’t, about 20%, probably get their perception from Hollywood movies or TV shows which doesn’t always paint agents in a favorable light.

It’s also important to note, the difference in ranking between agents and other professions such as lawyers for example, is substantial.

About 28% rank lawyers very low.

For telemarketers, 55% of respondents gave this profession a low rating for honesty.

And the worst, Members of Congress, had 58% of those surveyed ranking them poorly and only 8% ranking them above average.

Still, in this era of robocallers and spammers, it would be smart for agents to take measures to ensure they appear trustworthy in the eyes of their customers and their community.

One way to do this is steer clear of fluff and hype.

Offer customers the facts as much as you can.

Offer narrow-focused hyper-local market data

A great way to display facts is with hyper-local data.

 

That data could include:

• Recent Home Sales
• Trends in Property Prices
• School Data
• School Boundaries
• Neighborhood Demographics
• Crime Ratings
• Cost of Living Indices
• Municipal Boundaries
• Points of Interest

Okay, a broker or agent might shrug, here’s more work for me to do.

But when you work with national data aggregators such as Home Junction, they do all the work for you.

All the broker or agent needs to do is choose the neighborhoods they want to target and then order the data from Home Junction.

Home Junction provides a Real Estate Data API (Application Programming Interface) which is basically just a few snippets of code added to a website.

That Real Estate Data API then supplies a wealth of hyper-local data for a specific neighborhood or subdivision on the agent’s website. Not just by zip code, but parsed right down to a designated area such as a neighborhood, community or subdivision within that zip code.

Talk about credibility.

With this valuable data, an agent can show buyers market trends not just for an entire city, but for the specific neighborhood where they would prefer to live.

Pulling stats from a large area can be misinterpreted and misleading. For example, home prices for a town might be flat overall.

But for the Exciting Heights Community where schools have high rankings, the hyper-local charts might show sales are booming and homes are selling fast.

Conversely, wouldn’t it be great to show potential sellers how you are going to use your Real Estate API to show prospects their street is “hot” is when it comes to desirability?

Facts mold perceptions

Consumers today have their fake detection filters up on high.

Using a Real Estate API to show them the real facts about the local housing market will go a long way in building a high level of trust.

After all, most of the real estate business transaction is based on trust.

And this simple attribute can go a very long way in helping consumers make a decision.

That trust can also be parlayed into future business and a significant number of referrals as people tend to trust their friends and family more than ever when making decisions.

As they say, perception is reality.

While a Real Estate Data API provides hard data, those facts will go a long way into shaping the perception about your firm in the minds of your clients and your community.