Digital flat tours, Immomio tenant matching and the digital tenancy agreement
The coronavirus crisis is affecting the housing industry too. Above all, the fact that flat viewings are often no longer possible is bringing letting activities to a standstill in many places. With live video viewing tours, digital tenancy agreements and Immomio tenant matching, we help our customers keep their letting processes going even while contact restrictions are in place.
Within just a few days from mid-March, the letting business of our landlords, property managers and agents came to a near standstill. So we picked up the phone and worked with our customers to figure out how best to support them during this difficult time. In many conversations with our customers, it became clear that viewing appointments are the bottleneck. Carrying out viewings in an occupied flat is unthinkable. Viewing empty flats is also proving difficult in many places, as prospective tenants are wary of personal contact.
The birth of live video viewings
Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures, so within a few days we developed a video viewing tour. With it, landlords or outgoing tenants can use an app on their mobile phone to guide prospective tenants through the flat via a live video stream. Even when outgoing tenants carry out the viewing, landlords can join virtually to answer questions. The stream runs via Immomio’s servers in Germany and is deleted immediately after the viewing, which also makes the solution unproblematic in terms of data protection law.
Immomio tenant matching helps minimise the number of viewings
Although this new feature is still in a pilot phase due to the short development time, dozens of Immomio landlords are already using it. For them, letting activities are already back close to pre-crisis levels. Alongside the video tour, Immomio tenant matching has also proved to be an important element for letting during the coronavirus crisis. The precise qualification mechanism allows a qualitative pre-selection of prospective tenants in order to keep the number of viewings as low as possible.
The digital tenancy agreement for completing lettings remotely
Developing the digital tenancy agreement signature took considerably longer than the birth of the video tour. This new module represents a milestone in digital letting. Immomio’s digital tenancy agreement signature is the first and only solution in Germany for signing tenancy agreements electronically in a legally compliant way. Since the end of March, Immomio customers have been able to sign their contracts digitally, which means they can now also handle the last step in the letting process digitally and contact-free. To support them during the current crisis, our customers receive 10 contract envelopes free of charge.
We are eagerly looking forward to the post-COVID era, when the restrictions will be lifted again. It is easy to imagine that many of the digital work steps now born out of necessity could become standard for many landlords under normal conditions too.