How to sell a HIP replacement

I read, with mild amusement yesterday, that the Decentralisation and Local Government Bill announced as part of The Queen's Speech will bring about the "Outright abolition of Home Improvement Packs": Even in their final hour, HIPs continue to cause confusion at the highest level. But as the rumbles of discontent at the decision to get shot of them quickly subside, there is already talk of what, if anything, should replace them.

Peter Bolton-King confessed at The Property Professional Show that he had spoken to many others about what to do in (or at) the wake of HIPs and the consensus is that the issues with the home buying process that HIPs so spectacularly failed to deal with, still need to be dealt with somehow, by someone at some point. No doubt this will be a topic for further rampant debate, but I think it is important that it is a) a debate for the industry, not for Government and b) it is just a debate at this stage, our current efforts need to focus on recovery rather than reform.

Fast forward a bit to a point in the hopefully not too distant future when mortgage availability has dramatically improved and Bill Oddie has been brought in to save the endangered species of the First Time Buyer and we can once again pull in for a pit-stop and take a good look under the hood. If we can then come up with a HIP replacement, we should consider much more carefully how we present it to the public. Perhaps there are some lessons from other industries about how this should be approached.

As a young father, I am slowly coming to terms with the fact that my next choice of car will need to be influenced more by boot capacity than cubic capacity. High on the list of requirements will also be safety. I really don't know what the difference would be if I crashed a car with a EuroNCAP safety rating of 5 as opposed to 3. Perhaps it's the difference between a bruise or a break, perhaps it's the difference between life and death. All I really know is that safer is better and therefore I should have a preference towards the highest possible NCAP rating. I would probably not regard a Car Information Pack that explained the technical details of airbag deployment or crumple zone performance to be much use in making that decision. Ultimately, I just want an expert to tell me it's safe, I don't necessarily need to know how or why.

 
There are plenty of other examples of industries getting behind a badge that acts as reassuring hallmark for consumers. The vast majority of us would not dare to book a holiday that was not ATOL protected and yet who outside the travel industry can explain in detail what protection ATOL actually gives you. It's changed to Gas Safe now, but CORGI registration for gas engineers is also a name that consumers have come to trust without understanding why.

HIPs provided too many meaningless ticks in meaningless boxes. A whole bunch of information that the average consumer found difficult to derive any actionable insight from and hence hardly anyone ever asked to see one. Our industry is a process driven one, but our customers are not familiar with the internal workings of the property engine and do not want to become RICS qualified to understand the intricacies of what surveys and searches can reveal. The detail always has its uses for the professionals involved, but from a consumer perspective, we need something that simply says "it's all fine, you have no reason to pull out of the purchase."

This is not something that can or indeed should happen overnight, but if enough agents, enough solicitors, enough industry bodies, maybe even a Housing Minister or four could get behind a scheme and sell it to the consumer as a simple benefit, then we might fare better than we have with HIPs.

Augmented Reality Property Applications

Mobile internet usage is accelerating at a phenomenal rate and in Dec 2009 alone, some 16 million people in the UK accessed the internet from their mobile phones. Not only are the number of users growing, but their usage is too, with one in five mobile subscribers surfing using a smartphone.

The property portals have responded by launching mobile websites and iPhone apps for the increasing number of home hunters using mobile devices. However, with such a fast growing audience to please, mobile is one of the areas where we will see the most significant developments in the coming years and one of the major developments is Augmented Reality.

Augmented Reality applications combine virtual data into the physical ‘real world’ by utilizing the iPhone 3GS or an Android phones compass, the phones camera and it’s GPS system. The result is that you can see things such as the location of Cash machines, restaurants, coffee shops, bars, hospitals, hotels etc, even if they are miles away.

I would expect that as you read this you are already thinking about where I’m going with this in terms of property search. Using this same technology, house hunters walking down a street will/can point their phone camera ahead of them to identify which properties are currently available for sale or to let.

This technology already exists and there are currently two applications available that perform this type of property search. Using the ‘Layar Reality Browser’ application, users can access two further applications called ‘house detective’ and ‘Find a Property’ (not to be confused with TDPG’s findaproperty). Both apps have been built using the Nestoria search engine (more info on the open API here ) and are really good early examples of how this technology will work and no doubt be integrated by the main property portals.

There isn’t much difference between the two (the orange one or the blue one) so below are some screen shots from the orange one (Find a Property) to show you how it works.

When you go into the app it automatically opens in the camera view and will begin searching for properties in the direction you point the phone. A 3D mesh appears on the screen and the app loads property images onto the grid.

 

As you touch the properties on the screen, the orange bar at the bottom gives you the property address and its distance from your current location. In the top right corner you also have a 'radar' higlighting the density of other properties around you.

 

Touch the bar and it gives you some further basic information about the property and the options to return to the camera view (done), get Google map directions to the property (take me there) or view further details, which takes you through to the listing on the agents web site or portal.

If you prefer, the app can show the properties on a map or in a list and there is also the option to switch between lettings of for sale properties. One additonal feature in the house detective app is the ability to adjust the search range, and whilst there is currently no option to refine the search criteria, I’d imagine this is likely to come at some stage in the future when the property portals get in on the act.

  

For now, it is working on the basic rule of location, location, location.

I know of one portal that is already working in partnership with Nokia on this technology for the property world and would be very surprised if the others aren’t doing something similar.

So what should estate and letting agents be doing about this? Do they need to be investing in augmented reality and iPhone apps?

My recommendation to most agents would be to focus your initial mobile internet efforts on ensuring your main web site is optimised for mobile visitors. This will mean that it recognises visitors that are using mobile devises and provide them with a better experience on their mobile handsets small screen.

iPhone apps are probably the next port of call, but I’d suggest you research well before you spend. A poor app could do more damage than harm as the current users will be fairly switched on users. Unless you are confident of winning new listings on the back of it as one agent I know is (currently losing them to competitors who have them) then maybe leave this trick to the portals.

There is no question that the growth in mobile internet searching is something we as an industry need to take seriously if we are to keep up with developments and give mobile users what they want and expect.

Keep it simple

Much to my surprise, I found this leaflet from Gascoigne-Pees on the doorstep yesterday. For a moment, I actually thought that I had received a piece of canvassing literature from a political party. My home constituency of Epsom is apparently safe as housing policy according to the brilliant voterpower.org.uk and hence, none of the parties seem to have bothered troubling me with doorstep propaganda. I was actually rather disappointed to find it was a gimmick from an estate agent. But, fair play, they got my attention for a moment.

Coming up with fresh and exciting ideas for marketing the services of estate agents is always a challenging task. What have we got to say that's new? What would be really compelling to potential vendors? Why would anyone pay attention to this? The challenge to come up with ideas to answer these questions can have a tendency to lead you away from a solution that adheres to one of marketing's most clichéd mantras:

Keep it simple, stupid.

The phrase was actually originally "keep it simple and stupid" and although it's true meaning has been debated by minds immeasurably superior to my own, I take it to mean that you should keep marketing communication simple to the degree that it seems stupid to the creator. The creator after all has an intimate understanding of the subject, the company and the proposition. We should not necessarily assume that the recipient is as familiar with the services that estate agents offer. Stupidly simple = easy to understand.

This is perhaps why I still hear many a tale of new instructions arising from the oldest, the simplest, maybe the stupidest of estate agency marketing lines:

"Call us today to arrange a FREE valuation"

In an age of brand engagement and viral marketing where we marketers are increasingly pressured to disguise advertising as entertainment, this dinosaur of a headline may seem almost vulgar. But it works...

It works because it is simple, it is compelling, it uses the word FREE (in CAPS preferably). It offers vendors what they really want; insight into the value of their property at no cost and with no obligation. You may say, well we've all offered that for years, but in an age of FSBO services with up front fees and crude automatic valuation models, there may be a renewed appeal for this old faithful line.

No doubt a fresh slew of cheap estate agency leaflets with a World Cup theme are poised for print at this very moment. And some of these will provide a moment of mild entertainment to disinterested customers on the short journey from front doorstep to recycling bin. But I was reminded in a seminar the other day of the pent up demand that exists in the property market. 800,000+ households want to move, but have continued to wait with frustration and anticipation for the financial pieces of the puzzle to fall back into place. These people are receptive to property news, insight and advice without the need for gimmicks or overly complicated offers.

I wonder how many "FREE Valuation" letters and leaflets there are already stuck to fridges in the homes of those 800,000 households ready and waiting to be 'redeemed' at some point in the not too distant future.