In our podcast you can catch an interview with Jeanne Massa, CEO and co-founder of Habiteo.
She was interviewed live for the « Mag de l’Immo » with Erick Cala and Kenza Braiga.It was an opportunity to take a look not just at her unusual career path but also Habiteo’s values and aims.
Launched four years ago, Habiteo has become a complete platform for marketing new-build real estate.Originally based on a simple observation — that consumers’ habits have changed — the challenge was to digitize the end-to-end customer journey, from 3D modeling and housing configuration, to transparency of information and customer knowledge.
Most prospective buyers need a significant degree of autonomy, i.e. to go to a salesperson or rather, an expert advisor, at a moment of their choosing. And since 85% of buyers start house-hunting on the Internet, you need the right tools to engage them online.
Helping future buyers plan
The first thing was to respond to the challenge of how to help future buyers imagine themselves in their future, as yet unbuilt, home(VEFA). This means giving buyers a feel for the surroundings, allowing them to have virtual tours and see what their future homes will be like.
Adding customization
Today, we all want something that is unique to usand not just generic. From shoes to T-shirts, almost anything you want can be personalized. In the property market, we have reached the same stage. For example, housing configurators allow you not just to choose materials but to do even more, for example moving a partition wall.The real challenge is to make this process smoother and simpler. The idea is to not have to rely solely on architectural plans that can be complicated to read. It is also to be able to visualize the effect of a parquet floor, for example, on an entire room and not just on a sample. Even when you can touch a sample, it is difficult to visualize the room in its finished state. This is the unique feature of housing configurators.
Putting the client back at the heart of the business
Customer knowledge is extremely important.In new build real estate, we need to look after the customer really well and spend a lot of time with him or her. The road to purchasing a new build is a long and very stressful one. Thechallenge is to reassure him or her at every stage with customer relationship management tools.
The MyHabiteo platform, launched in 2018, allows real estate developers and marketers to manage both sales and marketing. The platform allows you to have customer knowledge, to be able to follow the activity on the account, and to share information. For example, the salesperson may be ill and someone needs to be able to take over. If all the information is on bits of paper or Excel files on the computer, it becomes more complex. These are basic approaches, and already exist in almost all sectors. But in new build real estate, we’re still at the early stages. This is all about digitalization.