Your own home in three dimensions

Newer and more complex IT tools are coming on to the market to assist in client-salesperson contacts. In estate agencies, potential customer can see for themselves how a flat is situated as regards orientation, a neighbouring car park or a recreational facility. You can also go on a virtual tour of the apartment thanks to 3-D visualizations

Customers have become used to simple search engines, which make finding a desired home much easier. Estate agents and websites are now offering such a service. In the questionnaire you can define the location you prefer, the size of your future home, the number of rooms and the maximum price. All you then need to do is click the ‘search’ key and then … collapse into a state of depression.

Second generation

But that system, too, is now out of date, with developers now demanding more from their IT systems, especially those who manage several projects and have a few sales offices to run.

Jerzy Bieniewski, Dom Development’s sales and marketing director, gets straight to the point: “Creating a collision-free sales system between head office and local offices is enormously important. A good apartment reservation system is essential, allowing many people to work on it at one and the same time, without overlapping.”

IT companies do not have many ready products on offer to assist in these kinds of sales. ProfProjekt has, however, created such a program which allows collision-free reservations to be made while also monitoring how the whole accountancy system is operating, including customer payments. In addition, customers in such a sales office can study the floor plans of apartments through visualization and three-dimension projections. LW Development is now using such a system, as is Hines for selling the Impresja estate in Warsaw’s Miasteczko Wilanów.

Piotr Duchewicz, ProfProject’s company director, comments that: “It is easier for developers to highlight those homes which they are most interested in selling. The system is also frequently used during telephone negotiations ensuring customers are efficiently and rapidly served.”

As regards possible profits, home sales managing systems are not all that expensive, with less-advanced, single-point units costing as little as PLN 2,000.

Budding on the web

In the opinion of Bartosz Soroczyński, IBM Polska’s sales director: “Internet technologies can be responsible for a whole sales cycle from market research (polls, competitions) up to creating demand by managing the sales cycle. There are no true websites in Poland for this. since what is available are only interactive websites giving access to certain information.” Due to the maturity of the real estate market and customer requirements, professional systems could and should operate with high efficiency. Today’s quasi real estate websites possess much too few search criteria. It would be much easier to find an interesting offer were requirements definable with greater accuracy. An increasing number of customers no longer direct their whole attention to the price and size of an apartment, but also towhether it will be a good place to live in in the future. To find an interesting housing investment through the internet is a difficult task.

But market movements are now at last taking place with an increasing number of developers gradually improving their websites, though they are not an investor’s priority. Jerzy Bieniewski, Dom Development’s sales and marketing director, reveals that: “We are currently working on our internet system, by extending and streamlining it. We shall definitely extend certain ways of offering homes, e.g. as regards their geo-position. We shall also introduce other solutions, but I don’t want to talk about them at the moment. We fully appreciate the part the internet can play in the sales process, though it is rather of an assisting nature. What is still of primary importance to the customer is price and location.”

Changes in the offing

A whole host of companies are working today on Poland’s housing market and almost all projects are finding customers without any major problems. But the current red-hot market is bound to cool down in the not too distant future.

In the opinion of Bartosz Soroczyński of IBM Polska: “When things start changing on the property market and supply starts exceeding demand, the struggle to win customers is bound to spiral. Perhaps that is when these tools will start being widely used. Good websites should possess a large number of minor sites in which detail stock exchange and foreign currency indexes – as well as, for instance, rental rates and maps of provinces – could be detailed. Websites as well as all the software used for customer services will surely be developed further.”

Zuzanna Wiak