‘Trends come and go, and style evolves.’ This famous quote from Karen Elson doesn’t only apply to fashion and pop culture. Seeing how commercial real estate trends have evolved over the last couple of years, realtors in particular should keep a close eye on emerging trends in real estate. 

For most industries in overcoming the challenges of recent times, improvising meant adopting new methods to conduct business. This paved the way for an evolution of many industry trends. Real estate technology trends led the way in this evolution, as new tools were introduced to help realtors adapt to the new way of business. 

So what are these newer commercial real estate trends? And are there any emerging trends in real estate that you should definitely keep an eye on in 2024? The most important in fact are video marketing and virtual tours. But that’s not all! I’ll tell you now the top 5 emerging trends in real estate (in no particular order) that you need to look out for in 2024. 

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‍Emerging trends in real estate: Virtual property tours

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A recent study by Matterport found that a listing with a 3D virtual tour sold for a price of up to 9% higher and closed up to 31% faster than an average listing. If that’s not enough to convince you that this is one of the most important commercial real estate trends to keep an eye on, we’ve got more impressive stats for you. 

Realtor.com statistics report that listings with virtual tours receive 87% more views than home listings without tours – and that 54% of buyers skip over listings of properties that don’t include virtual tours.

Why did virtual tours become one of the most pivotal real estate technology trends and how can you also be a part of it?

As soon as COVID-19 hit, the whole world went into lockdown. Everyone was confined to their homes and people who wanted to buy houses needed a way to see as much of the property as possible without having to violate any lockdown laws. 3D virtual tours were the best way that realtors could show off their properties! So their popularity spiked with the pandemic. 

Now, you might be wondering why you should worry about virtual tours now since COVID is pretty much in the rear-view mirror. Even though lockdowns are behind us, the popularity of virtual property tours has yet to diminish. With a recent study by the National Association of Realtors revealing that 50% of their customers consider a virtual tour to be useful in making their decision, it’s evident even today that virtual property tours continue to be one of the top real estate technology trends.

If you want to take advantage of this trend, there are quite a few virtual tour providers just like Matterport in the market. Pair up the virtual tour with an interactive full-page chatbot to give an immersive experience to your web visitors. 

‍Emerging trends in real estate: Single listing web pages

A landing page for a single property might seem like a lot of unnecessary work at first. But if you look into it, it’s neither unnecessary nor is it a lot of work. 

If a property catches a homebuyer’s eye, then that person would want to know everything they possibly could about that property. Remember the full-page chatbot that I told you about? This is one of the coolest commercial real estate trends for realtors to show off a property’s max potential. 

This single listing web page can be used as a conversational landing page for your property. With a conversational landing page, you can treat your web visitors to a virtual tour of the property! While they’re on the virtual tour, the chatbot provides all the information the client needs about the property, creating an interactive and immersive experience. 

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Emerging trends in real estate: Video marketing

The social media landscape is another thing that’s been flipped on its head. Half a decade ago, Facebook was the boss of them all. But now, barely anyone uses Facebook and video-sharing platforms such as TikTok have grown in popularity to a level where it’s even challenging Google in certain respects. 

Even instagram is slowly moving away from the photo-sharing algorithm that made them so popular. Now shifting their attention more towards Reels. And these vertical videos are rapidly becoming one of the top commercial real estate trends you need to hop on sooner rather than later.

Let me hit you with a couple stats that will blow your mind. According to Webdew, real estate businesses that use videos receive 403% more enquiries than others. That’s not all, website links with an embedded video get 157% more organic traffic than a link without a video. 

Out of all the emerging trends in real estate, I believe that videos is the one that’s growing the fastest. Use Instagram Reels and TikTok to your advantage. Hop on these platforms now and start making simple and short vertical videos. By default, people like to see things visually in video format! 

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Emerging real estate trends: Virtual renovations 

When people buy homes, there are two main factors that everyone considers: finances and emotions. When buying a house, people want to see if it fits their budget and if it feels like home. So every homebuyer is very likely to make one or two changes to their home to make it fit their lifestyle. 

Are there any new commercial real estate trends you can use to visualise everybody’s dream home? With today’s technology, yes. 

One of the most exciting new real estate technology trends is virtual renovations. This is an up-and-coming technology that helps realtors digitally execute renovation plans the client has so they can see how it will look in real life. Virtual renovations allow buyers to see the true potential of their home. It removes the need for imagination, so buyers can be swept away by what the home could be.

Click here to learn more about trends in property management technology.

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Emerging real estate trends: Going multichannel

One-dimensional marketing no longer works for any industry. This is particularly true as research shows that 89% of homebuyers who hired a real estate agent also use the internet to do their own research. So you need to make sure that your brand is everywhere! 

First things first, your website SEO is key. The National Association of Realtors report that real estate-related searches on Google have grown 253% over the past 4 years.

But that’s not going to be enough. Be sure you’re present across all platforms as the same report by NAR shows that buyers use specific online tools during different phases of the home-search process.

Beyond a website’s trust-building tools, a report by Professional Builder notes that 88% of buyers consider access to useful, high-value information an important reason to engage and sign up online. This useful, high-value information includes email updates about current promotions or offers, pricing and availability, invitations to exclusive events, follow-up from a sales agent, and entertaining social channels.

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‍Summary

Commercial real estate trends are constantly changing. Taking advantage of them requires you to stay on top of them. Out of many emerging real estate trends, I think virtual tours, virtual renovations, and video marketing are fast-moving bandwagons realtors should jump on ASAP.

Every homebuyer has a lot of questions about the property they eventually buy and when they’re ready to buy, they’re most likely to choose a realtor who’s familiar and trustworthy. You can use a virtual tour for your listing to help visualise details about the property, then use video marketing on your social channels to build hype and get your brand out there.