Written By: Jerry Rossi
Jerry Rossi
And what is more emotional than buying or selling a home. Every day real estate professionals spend time delicately balancing the fight between decision – emotional – and habitual parts of the brain, a fight that occurs whenever a decision is made.
The Brain Is Habitual
Our brain is made to work on habit. Once we repeat the simplest act a number of times, it automatically becomes habit. It does this so we don’t have to think about it. Walking, breathing, driving to or from the office is all locked into the visceral part of our brain where all habits reside. The visceral is the only part of our brain that grows as we age. The older we are, the more things we do habitually.
Where we live now (our residence), as well as our surroundings, has become a habit. When we walk into a home for sale, we start thinking about it. “Hmm”, says the Neo-cortex (frontal lobe where all decisions are made) this is interesting. I wonder if I should move? Then the argument starts. The habit brain says, “No, I’m fine right where I am and I’m not moving.” The decision brain says, “Yes, but look how low interest rates and prices are now.”
Impulse Buy
It would be great if we only had two parts of our brain engaged in the decision to change homes, but there is another – the Paleo-mammalian! What? It’s just a big word to describe the emotional part of our brain that sits between the neo-cortex and the visceral. It is activated when we are in a buying mode. If our emotion is not triggered in the impulse or purchase mode, there is more than an 85% chance we won’t act. Hence, all purchasing is emotional.
We, as real estate professionals, spend our days involved in the customer/client inner battle between the ‘habit’, ‘emotion’, and ‘decision’ parts of the brain. Add to that, appraisers, mortgage lenders, attorneys, and, of course, our family and ourselves?
In 1998, the National Association of Homebuilders announced that, “A New Home purchase is an impulse buy!” No news to me, I personally purchased at least two homes when I wasn’t looking. Once, walking into a home on office tour and getting emotional, I thought it had more to offer than our current home. I called Bishop (my wife). She came over and we got emotional together, which activated the decision making process. We shook off the habitual feeling to stay where we where and figured out how to make it work. Wham, in less than 24 hours, we bought a new home.
Agents all over the country tell me about sitting a house open when someone walked in and said, “No thanks I’m happy where we are…” and 10 minutes later they were creating an offer to purchase. The emotional impulse buy!
Back to Square One – They Want to Sleep on It
On the other hand, someone walks into your open house and you watch the emotional lights glow and whistles toot… “Oh look, a bath for every bedroom. Oh, and it has four bedrooms and a three car garage and look at this big yard!” You ask if they want to buy and they say, “YES! But first we need to sleep on it.” Years ago, Tommy Hopkins taught me to answer this objection with, “The time to think about it, Mr. and Mrs. Buyer, is when I’m here to answer all your questions. I’ll get my sleeping bag out of the car – let’s go get to work…” 
I trust that all readers are aware by now that if someone wants think it over or sleep on it – YOU LET THEM!
So these excited, emotional prospects go home to ‘think it over’. You call the next morning and they say, “We’re going to raise the roof, enlarge our house, add bathrooms, widen the garage, and see if the neighbor will sell us part of their lot so we can have a bigger yard.”
“What the heck happened?”
They were emotionally excited about this house when they left yesterday. Well… here it is. They ‘thought’ about buying, they got ‘emotional’, but wait. They went to where they have ‘habitually lived’ for the last 9 years and the habit brain figured out a way to keep them there. Habits have a STRONG pull on the Emotion. Have you ever quit, or attempted to quit, smoking? Enough said.
So therein lays the emotional world of real estate and the battle between what a prospect is doing now, habit, and what they are thinking about doing, change, all within a whirlwind of emotion. In the past, emotions prompted consumers’ actions – walk-ins, ad calls, drive-by’s, sign calls, open houses, escorted showings, brochure box flyer inquiries…
Gone are the Days
No one is walking in, driving by, or calling on the ads (let alone reading the newspaper). REALTOR showings are down, brochure boxes are so 1900’s, flyers are a waste of paper and so un-green. Open houses are lifeless or, if you do get people, they may just be looking for prescription meds or casing the house.
The Way We Were
The world, the market, the way we were ‘ain’t no more’. As I uncovered in my article, The Evolution of the Real Estate Consumer, the consumer has evolved! They are no longer dependent on real estate agents for information. That’s the good news. We’ve taken off the hat of information provider and replaced it with that of advisor – a more exalted profession. The consumer has all the information. Every piece of real estate that’s for sale is now offered to the world on the Internet. In case you missed it, Google, Zillow, and Trulia are the new MLS. Oh, you didn’t know that… GET A GRIP. That’s the way of the connected consumer! That being said, everything has changed – the paradigm has shifted and the entire real estate profession is starting from ground zero.
‘The LOOK’ (“the LOOK, the HOOK, and the COOK” ™)
It starts with ‘The LOOK’. Real Estate is the American Dream – the number one investment in many people’s lives, the hot topic on TV news shows, the subject of over 2,100 current books, and the buzz at the water cooler, the prophecy of economists.
There are billions of hits on real estate sites – most from consumers who are looking at one thing – HOUSES. Houses, prices, pictures of houses, floor plans, room sizes, prices, amenities, neighborhoods, schools, builders, prices, square footage, locations, maps, walking distance, construction, absorption rate, aerial photographs, 360 tours, and, did I say, prices. Don’t think these consumers are up for ‘capture’. No way!
The way YOU buy
Let’s examine your Internet buying practices. You are surfing on the LL Bean site and find a picture of some boots you like. So you click on the photo for more information. Blip, a screen appears that says, “For more info on the LL Beanie Boot, please fill out the request form with your name, address, foot size, e-mail, website, and first male born child.” What do you do? Fill it out? NO, you delete LL Beanie.com and go to Zappos.com and buy the boots. We love the autonomy of the Internet – we won’t be captured until we want to be captured. And, we’re not unusual. It’s the American and World way to shop. Especially now that the economy is tight, we shop more and buy less. When we do buy, we buy for less.
Before we buy, we look. Because surfing for real estate is an acceptable practice, we look when we’re at work. Yes, that’s the time people shop for real estate. Late night they reserve for XX or whatever the gamer wants.
Surf from 12 to 24 Months
People will look at real estate for 12 to 24 months before they ever think of buying. Then, once in the buying mode, they will look for 4 to 8 weeks at houses first and agents second. That’s correct, agents second. They don’t care about you. They don’t care about your production, degrees, designations, certifications, or photo. They want INFORMATION and they want it NOW.
The HOOK (“the LOOK, the HOOK, and the COOK” ™)
I know the HOOK sounds negative like the carnival barker hooking you into the tent of oddities, or but wait… you’ll get a set of Ginsu Steak Knives. I’m not referring to that kind of hook. I’m speaking of the hook that brings the salmon back to the same river every year. What biological intuition brings the salmon back? I’m afraid that’s way beyond my knowledge base. But I do understand what hooks buyers.
Comfort Zone
You see, there are some websites that real estate surfers and suspect buyers return to on a consistent basis. This is different than Sites where they can have autonomy and ALL the information without having to ask – where they, in a zone of comfort, can peruse all the properties – a website they might even, are you ready for this, “Book Mark”. Technology guru’s call this the Return Visitor.
It’s Obvious what they DON’T want
What can you do to keep visitors returning? Let’s start with all of the items I previously mentioned; no hoops, no ‘fill this out before you can e-mail me’, no ‘ME, ME, ME ego sites’, no selling, no big splash pages with sound effects, and, for gosh sakes, no – “Cozy Country Charmer, this lovely 3 and den is bright and cheery, Mrs. Clean lives here, decorators dream, delightful neighborhood, seller desperate….” Yeeea gads, it’s enough to make you puke. No wonder Stephen Dubner in his book FREAKONOMICS thinks we have a code. Yes, he says all that verbiage in real estate ads is code and we REALTORS have a decoder book; i.e., Delightful Neighborhood, means nice neighborhood but this house sucks. Cozy means; not enough room for a lady and her cat. He makes a point – no one wants that STUFF anymore!
The Evolved Consumer Wants
What does the consumer want? INFORMATION! When do they want it? NOW! If they land on your site and don’t get ‘information now’… well, let’s just say your business success is just someone’s delete key away.
Here is a list of other items that will keep them coming back:
Quality Content
Full of useful information
Contact information on every page
An easy to recall URL
Updated often (at least twice a month)
Keep it fresh – keep it unique
Online newsletter
Blog/Discussion Forum
Remind people to bookmark
Monthly give-a-way contest
Local Area Quizzes
Continued here: http://www.powersiteblog.com/2010/02/10/hooking-buyer-emotion-part-2
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Great post. Some familiar information, but I enjoyed the thoughts on “the brain is habitual.” Getting my site where it becomes the “habitual place” for a consumer to go is my goal. Any specific ideas or thoughts on that?
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