Scheduled showings offer one-on-one access
It’s like having a personal shopper who learns all about your personal interests, styles, size requirements, color preferences and individual tailoring requests in advance of your first appointment. Likewise, the “by appointment only” approach to touring new-construction homes during the COVID-19 pandemic is turning out to have more benefits than buyers or builders might have expected.
“Think of it like a scheduled dinner with friends versus people just showing up at mealtime,” says Joe Klusnick, marketing director for Blue Mountain Communities. “By the time the buyers arrive, we’re ready for them.”
Klusnick adds that most buyers have seen the virtual tours before scheduling an appointment. The builder’s sales team in each community asks and answers specific questions in advance so that everyone is fully prepared to make the best use of their scheduled tours.
“We’ve already spoken to them about what the best product might be for them; we know their needs and we can have the right floor plans, flyers and brochures ready before they get here.”
Builders are noticing that arranging tours before visiting a community helps buyers reach the formal decision to consider buying a new-construction home. Instead of driving to communities out of casual curiosity, buyers are ready for deeper conversations with builders.
“To get an appointment to personally tour, you have to be prequalified,” says Colleen Edwards, marketing director for the River Islands master-planned community in Lathrop. “We know that people who are willing to go through the financial preparation for prequalification are serious buyers; that helps us focus on their needs.”
At River Islands, tours are 45 minutes to an hour long and scheduled directly with any of the River Islands builders.
People sometimes call Jamie Koski, Welcome Center manager for River Islands, before scheduling their tours. While Jamie doesn’t keep the schedules for 14 active projects, she can help buyers figure out where to start.
“If a buyer has a particular interest, such as single-story, two-story, something directly on the water, a certain number of bedrooms or proximity to a school, Jamie has this encyclopedic memory of which buyers in which neighborhoods have what they’re looking for,” Edwards says. “She’s helped people trim their list from 40 models to seven and then gives them the builders’ information or directs them to the builders’ websites.”
Tours feel relaxed, safe
Scheduled home and community tours incorporate a number of safety practices that are becoming standard from builder to builder, even when regulations may change from one county to the next.
“We require people to wear masks and provide masks for them if they don’t have their own,” says Linda Hebert, owner of Diversified Marketing and Communications and acting sales and marketing director for Kiper Homes. Kiper has newhome communities in Hollister, Discovery Bay and Lathrop.
“Before they come, we make sure they’ve spoken to a lender and if they haven’t, we put them in touch with someone for prequalification,” she says.
“We also provide hand sanitizer spray and we keep sanitized pens in separate containers. If they prefer, they can use hand wipes for opening doors; we can also give them a glove.”
Hebert finds that people at all ends of the buying spectrum, from first-time homebuyers to those seeking upper-end homes, have been very accommodating, prepared and appreciative of the safety precautions.
Also reinforcing these safety standards for new-home tours, several builders explained that models in new-home communities are cleaned between tours, in accordance with current, industry-wide practices in California. Hebert additionally says that, before a scheduled tour, each visitor is asked Covid-19-specific questions about known exposure and testing.
“Groups are limited to four adults, with no children, and typically include only the buyers and maybe their agent,” says Edwards. She adds that because buyers have more one-on-one time with builders’ agents whose attention isn’t split between several visitors at once, people get to ask more in-depth questions about how each home or community might meet their needs.
Touring model homes and learning about new-home communities in 2020, as it turns out, is taking place in more relaxed, personalized settings than one might expect. Even when everyone involved is wearing a face mask.