The Changing Face of Residential Real Estate Sector in India

The Coronavirus pandemic has unceremoniously disrupted the way we live and work. It has significantly impacted the economy and multiple sectors alike, including residential real estate. Covid-19 has brought a shift in consumer behavior with new trends setting in. This changed behavior has allowed the industry to re-invent itself.

Let us look at some aspects that consumers are looking for, while considering home purchases, post-COVID-19.

Emerging Trends in Residential Real Estate Buying

• Homes Closer to Nature-Biophilic Designs

Apart from the physical problems caused by the pandemic, consumers are facing many emotional issues too. ‘Pandemic fatigue’ as it is called, is caused due to increased stress and anxiety. It is immensely affecting people’s health, personal and professional relations.

To overcome this pandemic fatigue, many psychologists are suggesting that being closer to nature and the outdoors will help achieve tranquility and calmness. In these changing times, many home buyers are now opting for homes that offer good ventilation and open green spaces.

Most residential homes for sale are being conceptualized as per ‘Biophilic designs’. Biophilic designs are an emerging trend; a trend that helps in connecting the natural environment to the built environment, using natural materials, spatial design, and views or access points to nature.

• Community living and townships

The pandemic has altered the preferences of home buyers-that of community living. The most crucial benefit of community living is the self-sustainable ecosystem. People are now looking for safe, well-designed, and self-sufficient spaces that offer everything under one roof through spacious communities – for example, co-working spaces, cafes, convenience stores, fitness centers, and reading lounges, amongst others, within the township.

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• Home @ Office

Work-from-home and remote learning is the new normal for families. This has highlighted the need for quiet spaces. During and post-lockdown, having a separate, functional office at home has become more critical than ever. Homebuyers are looking for houses that can accommodate their work preferences and style, along with projects that offer practical luxury with efficient layouts. There is a growing demand for setups that enables them to be more productive and effective.

• Property E-tours and Online Buying Experience

The pandemic has revamped the whole real estate purchase process, especially the residential sector with new trends emerging. Homebuyers are now preferring to visit the project website first, fix a virtual meeting and take an e-tour, before opting for a site visit.

Keeping in mind the safety of the customers, developers are offering end-to-end digital experiences for home buyers, with investments in both AR (augmented reality) and VR (virtual reality) to ensure an experience that is almost similar to a physical site visit.

Virtual Tour is a VR technology using which a person can experience a location remotely. This means that through a virtual tour, you will be able to visit a place virtually and experience the surroundings even without being there. These are 360-degree virtual tours for the buyers that may be done from the comfort and safety of one’s home.

• Best Display of Property-Virtual Tours

For any residential or commercial property you promote on your site, you present it in a more attractive and exportable manner through a virtual tour. A proper virtual tour will highlight all the rooms and spaces in the house. A visitor will be able to navigate on their own and move from one room to another, go to all the floors and check out every detail of the house. Besides, you will be able to include information points where a person can click to get details. This means that you can inform the viewer of anything exclusive regarding any features or areas of the house.

• Virtual Tours are Time-Saving

People enquiring to buy a property and calling the developer are probably interested. But what must be kept in mind is that the people that are calling don’t have a visual of the structure of the property. They are only mildly interested based on the images you provided. There is quite a possibility that people visiting will not find the property suitable or attractive.

Thus, there are tons of cases where you invest your time and effort to guide people on visits, but they reject it since the house didn’t seem like what they wanted. However, if there are virtual tours on your site, the person calling you already knows how the place looks and how it is organized. Chances are that after they visit, if the house matches with what they saw in the tour, then they will probably make a decision or go for negotiations immediately.

So, you people at project-site won’t have to waste away hours on mildly interested people, giving them tours to properties and trying to convince them to buy. Virtual tour in real estate is the latest trend that you can use to increase your business conversion rate. Virtual tours are quite a breakthrough in the sector.

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• Safety Measures

Today, people are more cautious about hygiene measures and social distancing. To ensure their safety and hygiene, the homebuyers are engaging with developers who follow strict safety norms during site visits. To cater to this growing need, developers have adopted the practice of asking customers to pre-book appointments for site visits. Post arrival, the visitors are provided with hand sanitizers, masks, and PPE kits at the site. Employees at the project-site are also trained to ensure that social distancing is maintained.

The changing behavioral patterns of home buyers make it critical for developers to adapt to the new normal, by enticing consumers. These adjustments will ensure that the developers stay relevant in this dynamic market and sustain in the longer term. All top residential real estate companies in Pune and across India are endorsing this view.