The Text Message: A Gr8 Florida Home Loan Resource

In a challenging Florida real estate market, sellers face the difficulty of pricing as they put their homes on the market. They also need a way to reel in potential buyers. In this technological age, a new trend is taking shape to meet the latter goal:

• Text messaging

Instead of merely putting up a phone number on front yard signs, agents are beginning to include a string, or “code,” or numbers, to which those seeking a Florida home mortgage loan can send a text message to request more information.
That’s right - this service isn’t solely for teenage girls anymore. After the query is sent, several brief text messages are automatically transmitted in response from the text messaging service, giving information such as the number of bedrooms, the square footage and the asking price. One message lists the agent’s website address and explains how to request a call or brochure by e-mail. Some services, such as Phoenix-based House4Cell, send messages with photos of the inside of the home.

Making life easier for buyers; Receive Florida home loan insight in seconds

For buyers, this process eliminates the frustration of an empty flier box and playing phone tag with an agent just to determine a price. For sellers, it lets them know who, besides the neighbors, have passed by and snagged the listing information. And for real estate professionals, it’s a chance to connect with customers on the fly.

It also offers a new option for homes that are for sale by owner. If sellers don’t want their home phone numbers posted out front, they can communicate through a text-message service.

Agents, of course, are continually looking for new ways to acquire listings and communicate with prospective buyers. Text messaging has joined other innovations, including podcasts, which allow real estate agents to produce audio and video commercials for their listings and zap them to people who request them during their online Florida home loan search.

Options for your text messaging services

Several companies have begun offering high-tech services such as this in the last year. House4Cell launched its text-messaging service in 2005, as did one of its competitors, CellSigns, based near Philadelphia. Likewise, companies focused on real estate podcasts rolled out last year, too, including RealEstateShows.com, based in Marina del Rey, and the Xsites Network by A la mode Inc., based in Oklahoma City.

About 134 million American adults have cellphones and about 27% of them have used text messages, according to a study released last year by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, an initiative of the Pew Research Center.

What about privacy, though? In the age of do-not-call lists, the matter of sharing a cell number with a real estate agent is bound to concern some Florida home loan seekers. Federal law prohibits cellphone numbers from being placed in a telemarketer’s auto-dialer. However, when a prospective buyer sends a text message to the code number on a sign, he is voluntarily sharing his phone number with both the company that runs the service and the real estate agent paying for it.

How that information is treated depends on the agent and the company offering the service.

David Wachs, president of Cellit Mobile Marketing, which operates the House4Cell service, said company policy states it will “never, under any circumstances, sell or otherwise distribute your cellphone numbers to third parties.”

A Florida home loan podcast?

Another gadget changing home selling and buying is the iPod and the podcasts it has inspired.

A podcast is content created for iPods and distributed via the Internet. Podcasts can contain simple audio, or a combination of audio, photographs and video. The content can even be played on desktop and laptop computers, which makes them an attractive way for agents to communicate with buyers. Someone looking for a Florida home mortgage loan can visit an agent’s website and download podcasts about listings and subscribe to future podcasts, which means they will be automatically downloaded whenever the agent produces new ones.

The Home Buyer and Seller Survey released in January by the National Assn. of Realtors said 24% of buyers in 2005 identified the Internet as their first connection to the home they purchased, up from 15% in 2004.

Who knows where this will end? Millions are now looking for a Florida home loan online - common sense says they’ll gladly embrace the ease of a text message, as well.