About the author:
Stefan Williamson has worked in the property sector for more than 15 years as a specialist in letting systems. As Head of Housing Industry, he is the direct point of contact for everything relating to the Immomio letting solution.
Contents:
- Introduction
- An example from everyday family life
- What this means for everyday life in the housing industry
- Interview with my son Diego
- Sketch of the application process
- The essence of the interview
- Summary of Generation Z’s wishes and expectations
- Arrange a conversation
Change is not an end in itself. Nor, by the way, is digitalisation.
As the introduction to this series of articles showed, enough pressure – or even a lack of alternatives – can be a strong and legitimate driver of change. Even if these are not exactly among the most proactive motivators, at a certain point it becomes grossly negligent to ignore them. But what looming lack of alternatives are we actually talking about here?
Generation Z:
More precisely, the way in which you as a
housing company will communicate with them.
Generation Z is generally taken to mean those born between 1997 and 2012
A quick calculation: yes, that’s right – they have been driving for many years already, and around a third of them are probably now seriously thinking about moving into their first or second flat of their own.
As the father of four Generation Z children (9, 13, 15, 16), I am confronted every day with the bitter truth that I am not nearly as hip and modern as I thought I was only yesterday. Born in 1982, I just about belong to the previous Generation Y, and I am personally proud to call myself a „digital native“. On the other hand, I also lived through a time of rotary-dial telephones, fax machines, screeching modems, pen pals and no mobile phones at all.
What sets Generation Z apart from us
is not so much that they take digital for granted,
but rather their aversion to anything analogue!
And that brings us to the looming lack of alternatives you should prepare for: if you want to reach your future tenants, you need to be willing to fundamentally rethink the way you communicate – and to actually allow change to happen.
An example from my everyday family life:
When dinner is ready and the kids need to come downstairs, my wife simply posts a message on Discord. Alternatively, I ask Siri to send an intercom voice message to all the phones, tablets and headphones in the house. Perhaps you will agree with me when I say that the memory of mum personally coming into the children’s room, or a loud „dinner’s ready!“ bellowed up the stairs, somehow feels more familiar and more right. But for most of us that childhood is probably a few decades ago. Since then, a lot has changed – driven, incidentally, largely by our own generations.
Of all these things, let’s pick out just one supposedly minor detail: headphones. Thanks to mobile devices, my two teenagers are online almost all the time, but acoustically they are completely offline from their immediate surroundings. Why?
- My daughter devours around 3–5 books a month, mostly as audiobooks. That’s why she has her AirPods in almost non-stop.
- In times of home schooling, lessons take place almost entirely via video conference: headphones are needed here as well.
- And when my son plays a round of games on the PC – you’ve guessed it: the 3D sound simply comes across better with over-ear gaming headphones.
The old form of dinner’s-ready communication is still as lovely as we remember it, but the world around us has simply changed. Paradoxically, this new digital reality was largely created and shaped by our generation, through inventions such as the internet, smartphones and active noise-cancelling headphones. Do we seriously want to punish our children for this by not adapting our forms of communication to this newly created reality? The point is this:
If I want to reach them, there are ways.
Far more of them, and far more effective ones, than before.
And yes, it still sometimes feels strange to use Generation Z’s preferred channels of communication. But is it really so bad that things are different now from how they used to be? It is not nearly as impersonal for them as we might feel it is. Quite the opposite.
So what does all this have to do with your everyday work in the housing industry?
Well, my kids belong to the younger 50% of Generation Z. The other half is between 17 and 24 years old and is therefore either already looking for suitable housing or will be in the foreseeable future. How will this generation want to communicate with you, and where are conflicts bound to arise? Let’s take data collection during the flat search as an example:
Before a new Generation Z tenant moves in, they first have to get in touch with you as a flat seeker. How do these young people imagine this process? It was only while writing this article that I realised what a unique opportunity was sitting in the room right next door: a teenager who has never looked for a flat and therefore has no idea how it works. So I spontaneously asked my son Diego (16) for an interview – a small side note: the conversation really did take place exactly like this.
Me: „Imagine you’re looking for a flat in Hamburg. How would you go about it?“
Diego: „I’d just go online and type ‚flat search Hamburg‘ into Google“
No sooner said than done. Unsurprisingly, the well-known big property portals came up.
Diego: „Right, so now I can set the filter to Hamburg and pick one out of all the available flats, can’t I?“
Me: „Well, picking is a bit of a tricky thing. In markets like Hamburg, it’s actually the housing companies that pick the right tenant, not the other way round. But to do that, they first need some data from you, such as details of exactly what you’re looking for. What’s more, what you see here on the property portals is only a tiny fraction of all the available flats. Some housing companies only put the flats online that they haven’t been able to let any other way.“
„Huh, why? Are you sure? Why wouldn’t you put all the flats online?“
„Let’s just test it. What percentage of all tenants in Hamburg do you reckon move each year?“
„No idea – maybe 7%“
„Wow! How do you know that? It’s actually around 7.5%“
„It was a guess.„
„Not bad. Let’s take a large Hamburg housing company as an example. With 7.5% turnover, that works out at roughly 800 flats a month for which a new tenant has to be found. How many of those do you think are online on their website right now?„
„Probably most of them, maybe around 600 or 650?„
„This time you’re way off. Let’s have a quick look.“
There were a grand total of 7 flats online on the website. On the property portals, there were even fewer.
„I don’t get it. Don’t they want to let them again?“
Me: „Of course they do. And they do let them.“
„But where do I find them, then?“
„Not online, anyway. With most housing companies, you first have to register as a flat seeker. Using the detailed information about what you’re looking for, the housing companies can then send you suitable offers.“
„How many of them are there in Hamburg? So do I have to go to every housing company’s website and fill in their application forms?“
„Depends how you count. There are definitely more than 50. But by no means all of them have an online form on their website where you can register what kind of flat you want. With many of them, you still have to print out an application form and fill it in on paper, or even go to their offices in person so that your details can be recorded“
„Whaaat? That makes no sense at all!? I don’t want to sign up with every company separately. Before I hand over all my details, I want to know whether they even have suitable flats for me. And when I’m working later on, I won’t have time to drop by their offices during the day. What’s the internet for, then? Besides, it costs the companies a lot of money, staff, parking spaces and …“ (abridged version of an unusually long verbal storm of indignation from my otherwise rather taciturn son)
„So how do you think applying for a flat should work?“
„Hmmm, it should definitely be simpler. Let me think about it for a moment.“
20 minutes later, he came back with a sketch.
„Dad, you know Apple and Google, right!?“
„Yep, that rings a bell.“
„You can also use them as a login for other services and share the data you’ve stored with Google, for example, with those other providers.“
„Yes, I know. What are you getting at?“
„Couldn’t you do something like that for flat hunting too? Then you’d only have to enter your details once, and the information about exactly what you’re looking for would just need to get to the individual housing companies somehow.“
A broad grin and a touch of pride spread across my face.
„My son – that’s exactly what Immomio does! You create your search profile there once. Your details are then released step by step to the various housing companies and matched against the available flats and the landlords‘ requirements. You then only receive suitable flat offers where you also stand a good chance later on. That in turn saves both sides time that would otherwise be lost on unnecessary viewings.“
„Cool, so there is a good and simple solution! Isn’t that the company you work for now?“
For our question of how data collection for the flat search should work, the essence of the interview was very clear to me:
Registering as a flat seeker should be simple, centralised
and on no account analogue – it should be online and therefore available 24/7.
After this conversation, I was reminded once again of the phrase „digitalisation is not an end in itself„. Your own digital DNA often pushes you to want to digitalise every process and, ideally, to try out the latest technologies at the same time. But the „why?“ must not be forgotten!
In the end, it is not about the trendy chatbot. Nor is it about the sophisticated tech stack of an identity-verified digital signature, or the fact that the new inbox automatically pre-sorts the post using some mind-blowing AI technology. Technology and digitalisation as such are both secondary. First and foremost, it is about meeting customers‘ needs.
An appropriate way of communicating is always geared to the person you are talking to.
Generation Z’s wishes and expectations can be summarised as follows:
They expect short and convenient communication processes. They want to complete tasks as quickly as possible so that they have more time for other things. The aim should therefore be to digitalise and automate process steps to the highest possible degree.
Taking the example of collecting a flat seeker’s data, this process can take place entirely without any form of traditional communication. For Generation Z, this is not impersonal – it feels completely normal. They are even grateful for it, because they see it as a sign of appreciation that their precious time is not wasted on paperwork, waiting rooms and phone calls.
That does not mean, however, that the human touch is unimportant to them:
Tenant selection should, if you please, be fair. Digitalisation helps here too.
But what about personal contact, for example when it comes to communication during an ongoing tenancy? In the next article, we will start with an interview again and look at the different requirements that various age groups have regarding the form and outcome of appropriate communication, why digitalisation and automation are not necessarily impersonal, and how you can bring your staff along with you when the letting process is set to become somewhat more digital in future.
I would also like to offer to accompany you personally as you consider the digitalisation of your letting processes and any questions you may have. Feel free to get in touch, and let’s have a chat over a virtual cup of coffee.
Read the second article here: Digitalisation and the human touch – how do they fit together?