Selling Your Home in the Digital Age: How the Market Has Changed

I remember when I was a kid, and my mother would always find work for me, so that I could earn extra money to go buy candies, visit the cinema with my friends or get a new bike… She was a real estate broker and architect, just like me… Or is it the other way around?

Anyhow, every week she would pick up all the new listings from her brokerage, which came in printed packages from the real estate board weekly. The format was large perforated pages with six listings on each, and in no particular order.

My job was to separate all the listings, organize them by District and then by price, and put them in little black binders that my mother kept on a shelf in her office. There were about 40 of them, one for each district!

While doing that, I got a good insight of what houses cost, how big they were and how many bathrooms they each had… important information to know! In fact, I would ask all my paper route customers how many bathrooms they had in their houses as I went collecting money from them, door-to-door, for the newspapers that I had delivered to them over the previous 2 weeks, to remit to the Toronto Star. Weirdo, they must have thought…

Listing Your Home for Sale Looked Different Many Years Ago

Putting listings together was a whole different deal back then, and there were far fewer agents in the city at that time, as well, so it wasn’t nearly as competitive. People trusted their neighbourhood realtors as a source for information that was almost top secret, and this was stuff one would have to leaf through their little binders to get, in order to forward details to clients, or to figure out pricing for their homes.

The information was then relayed in the old manner of a letter or a discussion on the phone! There were no interior photos to go through, no computer databases. The information on each listing was prepared by the listing agents and had just been typed (with a typewriter) into a series of boxes on the listing forms and sent to the real estate board before being composed onto the perforated sheets that all agents could get. You could often figure where whiteout had been used to correct the typos on the listings…

Do you have an older home you’re thinking about selling? Read my complete guide to selling an older home right here.

Fast-Forward a Little While Later…

Many years later, the real estate board printed large books that contained all of the listings, arranged by district and price, but, again, with just a photo of the exterior. Real estate agents could leaf through these, like the bygone binders, but there was no internet.

Some agents would subscribe to a publication called the TEELA Market Survey to gain more information how the marketwise behaving to gain an understanding of pricing trends and potentially be able to make informed pricing decisions based on past sales in a district. Marketing a property would consist of newspaper ads, flyers, word of mouth, and a real estate sign on the lawn.

And those little black-and-white listings. It would always be a surprise for buyers once they were lead in the door to see what features lay inside a house that they were being shown.

Did they match the wording on the little black-and-white listings, and did that photo of the front of the house translate to an interior to match? Certainly, it was always good to put one’s best foot forward and show their home well.

A good agent would recommend that their seller declutter and set up their best furnishings, artwork and silver tea sets in the most attractive manner, just as one does now, but home staging wasn’t really as big a thing back then. I remember visiting houses with my mother on inspections, only to witness an assortment of girdles and pantyhose hanging in the bathroom… hmmmm….

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Real Estate Moves into the Digital Age

In the past 20 to 30 years, with access to the Internet becoming available to almost everyone, and the digital age being such that presentations became more and more sophisticated, things have changed enormously.

Sellers who have owned their houses for many years may have sold their previous one and bought the one that they are currently in through a very different scenario than what we do now. Many people did their last transaction in the days of old, as described above, and now everything is done remarkably differently!

Learn more about what it’s like to sell your home with me right here.

Buyers Act Differently Today Too

Many people do their initial home shopping on their own before heading out with their agents, facilitating some of the agents’ work by discovering home features and neighbourhoods on their own, and then suggesting what it is that they like.

They can read about district amenities, view streets and house exteriors on Google Street View, and visit the interior of houses through listing sites like REALTOR.ca or brokerages’ own websites featuring their own listings. There is very little hidden now, and it’s great that many house listings also include links to virtual tours and walk-throughs, floor plans and feature sheets, outlining the improvements that have been made over the years.

Design and renovation shows on TV empower people with information, making them feel more sophisticated and knowledgeable about things that they wouldn’t normally be acquainted with.

Are you buying a home soon? Read these posts next for more homebuying insights:

Visuals Are Key When Marketing Homes for Sale Today

But, how do we know if what we see is properly presented? Realtors now have access to many channels of information on the internet through their membership with real estate boards. We can access current and past listings; sold, terminated and price-changed listings; market trends and historical housing prices over the last several decades, by neighbourhood; all photos and specifications that were associated with these houses; property tax information; construction dates, and even property surveys.

Property surveys, however, aren’t as necessary as they once were to guarantee what one is getting, since buyers are encouraged to purchase (inexpensive) property title insurance through their real estate lawyers when closing a deal on a property.

Photo presentation of listings is so easy now, though not always good. There are still agents that insist on just snapping dark photos of toilets and corners of rooms with their iPhones and posting those in a listing, figuring that that is sufficient.

Most agents will hire a professional photographer to take a comprehensive set of photos to present a house in its best light, and may even provide a walk-through virtual tour which is created by a special camera that also surveys the spaces and pieces a multitude of photos together to prepare a tour that one can actually “walk through”.

All of this is digitally created and can be edited to make up for poor lighting or other issues. Additionally, an empty house can be furnished in photos with virtual staging, where realistic impressions of furnishings, artwork and tchotchkes can be added to photos, and are in the correct perspective and light mode! It helps to envision the space, which often appears smaller when empty.

Are you ready to start your selling journey? Get a free property evaluation right here.

The Actual Promotion of Your Property is Different Too

Marketing is easily done digitally, over the internet, and, once a listing goes “live” it can instantly be seen around the planet. For instance, all of my listings are immediately viewable, with floor plans, virtual tours, and feature sheet data on our normal channels through the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board, Realtor.ca, my Brokerage website and my personal website.

Within 24 hours, these listings are also viewable on all of our global marketing partner websites and are viewable anywhere. Further, all bookings to visit the properties are made online and directed through a booking service that alerts all parties of when an appointment is booked, confirmed, or cancelled, and when an offer is registered on a property. Appointments can be confirmed by text, e-mail or phone, So efficient.

Digital formats of everything are used, now, from photos and video tours to home inspection reports, feature sheets and backup data. Naturally, all of our Realtor forms are digital, as well, and executing every part of a selling or buying transaction can be done paperlessly.

The Actual Transaction is Easier with the Help of Technology

Finally, the conveyance of documents digitally is a salvation. It saves people from having to make time to get to each other to sign certain documents, such as listing agreements, offers, and amendments. It saves paper and gives everyone a true electronic copy with everyones’ signatures on it. Instantly. We used to print and scan or fax to each other, but now a tool such as Docusign, is used and it dates the signatures, then sends copies to all parties in a transaction instantly. This prevents documents from getting into the wrong hands in error, and is convenient executed on a computer or a smart phone. For those without these staples of technology, paper signed with a ballpoint pen is still acceptable… The speed in transferring these documents to lawyers once a deal is executed is extremely helpful, too.

In the end, everything is kept in electronic folders, and take no more space in one’s closets or on shelves. No more little black binders. An end to manila envelopes full of signed papers. And a permanent record of what went on, how it looked, who was involved.

Now everyone, knows how many bathrooms any house that’s on the market has… and what those bathrooms look like! Keep them clean!

Are you thinking about selling your home now or in the near future? I can help you get started. Reach out directly by calling 416-824-1242, emailing robert@lifeofluxury.ca, or filling out the form on this page.

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Selling Your Home in the Digital Age: How the Market Has Changed