At the 2020 National Settlement Services Summit (NS3), keynote speaker Ryan Berry, senior vice president of central operations for Zillow, addressed a virtual audience about the overall transaction process, and how COVID-19 has necessitated technological changes, which have resulted in customer expectations changing.

In his presentation, “The Digital Transformation of the Consumer,” Berry noted that the real estate industry never really has been on the cutting edge of technology. But in the past five or seven years, Berry said, the industry has started to see this change.

In particular, in the single-family real estate space, an embracing of technology has surfaced.

“We’re seeing consumer expectations being driven in certain areas more than we’ve seen before,” Berry said. “With COVID-19, demands and trends are accelerating. We need to use this time to think how the real estate industry is going to react to these new customer expectations.

“The overall transformation in consumer expectations is what’s driving it,” he added. “There is a transformation from the old category companies to what we call new categories. The usage of the smart phone is really driving this and has changed our lifestyle. This device has created new customer service expectations. There is an expectation to meet consumers where they are as opposed to asking them to meet us where we are. There is transparency and levels of control we haven’t seen before.”

Berry also shared examples of well-known companies who were unable to survive because of the inability to meet the evolution in expectations. These included Blockbuster, Tower Records and Toys-R-Us. Consumers loved their brands and the businesses were thriving, but they could not meet those new category expectations.

These companies, Berry noted, were dominant in the industry but they failed to evolve and grow with their customers. All three eventually closed.

“The consumer perception now expects certain things based on what companies are doing,” Berry said. “Many companies’ ‘new category’ is not just a tech or industry thing. Specifically, it’s a customer thing. Customers, in the new category mode, expect control, delight and simplicity across the board. Control is generally missing in real estate.

“No one is consistently talking to one another and the consumer is feeling that,” Berry added. “Consumers generally do not enjoy the real estate transaction. Over one-third of the time where they are engaged in the home sale process, they literally cry during that process. A delightful outcome is not being achieved. Customers are asking for help. We must work together as an industry to evolve this process and give customers what they expect, because if we don’t, others will. We must create standards and protocols with effective solutions because that’s what the customer demands.”

Berry asked how can we change from meeting where the industry is in relationship to where the customer is now. How can the industry identify and eliminate turbulence?

Berry admitted that many people in the real estate industry are working on this, not just Zillow. He said the industry must help consumers find a new place to call home online, and not just help them find a home, but get them into that home.

Consumers are not just wanting or expecting information on their devices, but to successfully execute the transaction on that device.

“At Zillow, we had to create a whole new mission to reflect change and give people the power to unlock their life’s next chapter,” Berry said. “We want to reduce friction in the journey that corelates to renting, buying, refinancing, or selling. We’ve had to go down into the transaction funnel to help customers and evolve their real estate experiences-one of these is the selling process.

“At no point are customers fully bound to the process until they sign at the closing date. We’re looking for what is best for customers and what satisfies their needs, their desire to move. The new category solution to the home selling problem took a massive effort but we’ve established a transaction platform customers have craved.”

He gave an example during his presentation of a couple in Texas who went through the process, and the result being they not only got out of their old house but got into their new one.

“The takeaway from that example of the couple in Texas is that it is really possible for customers to expect us to be in this new category. Great customer service throughout that experience was key,” Berry said. “We’ve done a lot of work to enable the new category across the board regarding the selling side. There is still work to do on the settlement side of things.

“We have great momentum to evolve and move in this space,” he added. “Customers expect paperwork and the processing aspect to be expedient. They don’t want to fill out a lot of forms consisting of redundant information. Customers expect transparency in the status of their process with no surprises at the last minute. They expect convenience, control and self-help tips to clarify and simplify process. Customers want secure online digital payments and received the way they want.”

Berry said it was amazing to see how industries are meeting expectations during the COVID-19 pandemic and suggested that the industry has a massive opportunity to capitalize on what the COVID-19 crisis brought to businesses in terms of innovation and technology adaptation.

He also referenced three calls to action in legislative and regulatory engagement assistance, industry adoption and coordination and partnership and engagement with financial ecosystems, and that all three must work or the entire transaction breaks down.

“COVID-19 has resulted in a number of temporary fixes, such as temporary orders approving online notaries,” Berry said. “We don’t currently have robust permanent legislation moving forward. We must be considerate of the insurability requirements, which needs to be met. Engaging early on with underwriters is important. And this is not unique to the settlement space. If we work together with other real estate groups and bring legislators to the table of conversation, we can make meaningful progress.

“As for the industry adoption component, even where we have legislative regimes and technology to help evolve the processes, we need to make sure workforces are trained and deliver these solutions when customers ask for them,” he added. “COVID-19 has required application of these technologies. We must work to simplify the process and partner with financial institutions, both large and small, so they are prepared technology-wise, as well.”

From the financial ecosystem component, Berry emphasized that this is a byproduct of the industry’s efforts winding up in secondary markets, and that those expectations have to be met. That has become part of a larger opportunity to evolve the experience, and that this is happening in every aspect of the real estate process.

Understanding what the customer wants and where they want the industry to be is gaining momentum.

“Within Zillow, the creation of 3-D tours skyrocketed as soon as the stay-at-home order went into effect,” Berry said. “In fact, it climbed 750 percent. Recent surveys showed three out of four owners wanting the option to tour homes remotely, with 86 percent of Zillow agents saying they use virtual tours during COVID and will likely continue these methods post-COVID.

“The adoption of virtual tours was forced, in a way, by COVID but the demand was already there,” Berry added. “This is not just about playing defense. This is also about opportunity for us all and the real estate industry as a whole – and the upside to creating an easy, seamless, frictionless real estate transaction could be massive.”

Berry shared the statistics reflecting the number of people who the show needs to move at 60 million a year, while the number of actual home transactions is in the 5 million to 6 million range. The demand is there to increase volume.

“Removing friction from the market place and enabling people to be participants is what we are really taking about,” Berry said “But now that you’ve experienced on-demand experiences, if a crisis had not taken place, would you go back? Customers may expect that moving forward and we all have better alternatives to provide. We have to work together to evolve the home transaction process. This can not only result in a greater customer experience but even greater opportunities for our industry.

“With COVID-19 in place, new tools for safer, and easier home shopping are being utilized such as digital floor plans, 3-D tours, virtual staging and self-tours. These tools will remain a constant when stay- at- homme orders lessen as consumers move forward,” he added.