Ravi Chandran
CEA is partnering IMDA to help SMEs in the property sector to build capabilities and raise productivity by introducing real estate digital solution
The Council for Estate Agencies (CEA) announced in March this year that it is partnering the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) and Enterprise Singapore (ESG) to introduce new digital solutions as part of the SMEs Go Digital programme to help estate agents (EAs), especially the small and medium-sized EAs, to use digital technologies and build stronger digital capabilities to raise productivity, with funding support from the Productivity Solutions Grant (PSG).
Agents facing difficulties in adopting real estate digital solution
CEA said that during its engagement sessions with the industry, some EAs shared that they face challenges in digitalising their work processes because of the low return on investment due to lack of scale.
It added that some of the suggestions that came out of the engagement sessions included the provision of centralised IT services, such as compliance-related services, as these would offer smaller EAs and their salespersons more affordable access to help them on their digitalisation journey.
Mr Paul Ho, chief mortgage consultant at iCompareLoan said that in this new landscape, property agents “must upgrade or die”. He believes that agents must adopt real estate digital solution and automate their workflow or risk being replaced by automation or technical tools.
Mr Ho said that iCompareLoan.com’s Home Loan Report is one such tool agents can make use of to augment their services.
The Home Loan Report tool is a Singapore’s first one-of-a-kind analysis platform that provides latest updates of detailed loan packages and helps property agents, financial advisors and mortgage brokers to analyse home loan packages for their clients and give unbiased home loan / commercial loan analysis for their property buyers and home owners.
As buyers of the future grow more discerning, agents cannot afford to just rely on their personality or their experience to attract clients. Buyers and sellers of the future will increasingly rely on agents to have knowledge on property finance calculations and this is where the Home Loan report comes in.
This trademarked tool is a one-stop solution that can help deliver a detailed home loan report to property agents in 3 minutes flat.
This is especially helpful when agents who do not have knowledge on property finance calculations make cold calls to potential clients and need to have a thorough analysis at hand in order to best direct each client on what their property buying and selling options are.
Such a report will not only help agents deliver the best possible property options to their clients, it will also help prevent the agent or potential buyers or sellers from wasting each other’s time since they already have all the information they need on the potential client’s buying or selling prospects at hand.
Mr Ho asserted that property agents who want to continue working in the industry must set themselves apart and position themselves as thought leaders, especially in this day and age where digital marketing largely drives the economy.
What’s especially good about the trademarked Home Loan Report is that the more agents use tool, the more traffic it will bring to the agency’s website. This feature is great for leads capture and brand recognition.
Tools like FPA and icompareloan.com’s trademarked Home Loan Report, plug into the Government’s Real Estate Industry Transformation Map.
The goal of promoting real estate digital solution is for property agents and property portals to be able to automatically verify key details all with the click of a button. The adoption of real estate digital solution will be an opportunity for firms a well as agents to undertake significant process innovation to become more productive. And at the same time make the process so much more efficient, effective, transparent, and competitive.
For agents, such digital tools help them to acquire more leads and encourage them to respond to consumers’ enquiries in a timelier fashion. By embracing digital technology with solutions specifically developed to increase productivity, agents can become more capable. And usually, more information on real estate digital solutions like the trademarked Home Loan Report is just an email away. Agents must develop stronger digital capabilities to enhance their productivity and professionalism to serve their customers.
