The advancement of technology has affected nearly every aspect of our lives, and home buying is no exception. In recent years, new technology has made the process much easier for buyers and sellers and continues to do so. Everything from the way we tour homes to the way we make transactions has been simplified by technology. Here are a few examples of how technology has made buying and selling houses easier for all parties involved.

 

 

Touring a home

The process of touring homes is being completely revolutionized by new trends in technology. With the use of 3D 4K virtual reality, prospective homebuyers can walk through an entire house without leaving their own. Many apartment complexes and condominiums have already taken advantage of this, and now more and more people are listing their homes with virtual reality tours online. Now, instead of having to drive out of your way to tour a home, you can walk all over a property from the foyer to the bathroom and determine whether you’re interested or not.

 

Additionally, the use of drones and satellite technology with sites like Google Maps, people can explore the exterior of the house and get perspectives beyond street views in a brochure. Home shoppers can explore the entire surrounding neighborhood of a home right from their couch. On the selling side, this makes it easier to list your home and gives potential buyers the ability to tour your house fully before making contact. 

 

 

Visualizing your new home

 

home trends

 

 

In the past it has always been tricky to try and envision what your new home will look like. You have an idea of what color you want the walls to be, but holding up swatches and trying to fill in the blanks never seems to do it justice. Now, like with everything else, there’s an app for that. Many apps to be exact. There are apps like Color Capture from Benjamin Moore and Co. that allow you to snap a picture of any color you see and match it through its database of over 3,000 paint colors. 

 

Other apps such as Home Depot Project Color let you pick from a massive selection of colors and see right on your screen how that color looks applied to an entire wall or the whole room. No more guessing about what something might look like. This makes the process a lot easier when buying a home as you can start to instantly visualize what certain changes to your home would look like. Another app called Amikasa lets you do 3D room designing. With Amikasa users can build, style, and decorate whole rooms online using furniture from real brands.

 

 

Shopping for Homes

Gone are the days when you had to get into your car and drive around endlessly in potential neighborhoods and window shop from the street. Now you don’t have to look like your casing a house to get an idea of what’s out there. With websites like Zillow and Trulia, you can simply type in a few details about what you want in a house and let it filter out homes for you. Look in specific towns, zip codes, and neighborhoods and let the online filters pull homes for you. With aerial views, useful maps of the area, and full neighborhood reports, these websites have made searching for homes much easier.

 

 

Applying for a loan

 

home trends

 

 

One new trend that emerged in the technological age is online banking and online mortgages. Rather than getting dressed up to go to a bank and apply for a loan, simply go online and apply on your own time without getting out of bed. Services such as Rocket Mortgage by Quicken Loans has quickly become a dominant trend in the home buying industry. According to Nerdwallet, Quicken Loans has become one of the leading lenders online or otherwise. 

 

With online mortgage lenders like Quicken Loans or Lending Tree, people buying homes get pre-authorization, compare loans, and take advantage of eClosing tools all with the convenience of doing it all online. These services also help speed up the process and allow buyers to immediately compare rates by entering numbers in on their own.

 

 

Digital transaction services

 

On top of being able to get a mortgage loan completely online, now people also have the option of taking the entire buying process online from the offer to the closing. With apps like DocuSign, buyers and sellers can make, review, make counter offers, and close all online. Using eSignature technology, both parties can sign documents online too. Other online tools like Noratize.com allow both buyers and sellers to have legal documents notarized online. 

 

Following trends of bringing the buying and selling process online, the Dotloop app goes beyond just eSignatures. Similar to DocuSign, Dotloop gives buyers and sellers the ability to modify contracts and other various documents on the go without holding the process up.

 

The advancement in technology from phone apps to video tech has changed the way we buy and sell homes. The entire process has been brought online, making it go much faster and smoother. Now people can walk through an entire house, look at the backyard and see the neighborhood from the comfort of their own homed. Trends in technology continue to make things easier for us and now is even taking some of the stress out of home buying.