Give the order and I’m there. The life of military families is an predictable one to say the least. Orders and directives are given and not only must the soldier go, but more often than not, so does their family. In fact, the average military child will move 6 to 9 times during their childhood school years. That’s 3 times the national average for non-military families. And these moves happen quick, with the families left with no choice but to pick a home completely sight-unseen.
That statistic about military child moves highlights the strain and pressure put on not just those who serve their country directly, but also their families. Multifamily professionals that are fortune enough to serve those who serve our country have a clear opportunity to make a difference and make at least one part of their lives a bit easier, improving the lives of the brave men and women in uniform.
How? Make their home search, moving, and move-in processes as smooth, simple, and transparent as possible. Again…how? Video!
Video can very simply help both your team and these families to “see” their potential new home through personalized live video tours or via personalized pre-recorded videos showing their homes, the community, and more. Whether live or pre-recorded, the impact these videos can make on the process are astounding. And in the process of making the lives of those who serve easier, you may even find that it’s helping to streamline things for your teams as well!
Let’s dive in!
Live Video Tours
When it comes to selecting a home on short notice, many times all military families have to go on are photos or maybe a video of a model home. They may also have the recommendation of fellow military families but even then, how can they be sure it is covering the specific needs of their family?
With all of these gaps and what ifs left open in the process, live video is the perfect solution for establishing a real, human-to-human connection with the family and showing them exactly what they want / need to see in their potential future home. When it comes to making a decision during a stressful time, transparency will instill trust and instilling trust will close a deal. Live video tours offer a personalized, real, transparent look into a home for military families prior to their moving and give them that increased comfort knowing what they’ll be walking into for their new home. Agents can walk them through multiple specs, answer specific questions and concerns, showcase the surrounding area, and more — all via live video.
Another benefit of walking through properties using live video? All parties can be involved in real-time! Whether the entire family is together or spread all around the world serving, they all can join the live tour and experience the space together, giving all necessary parties input and comfort in the process. Moving suddenly is already hard enough. This way, at least everyone will know what they can really expect with their new place and they’ll have established a relationship with the agent on the other end – something that can prove very beneficial in the long-run.
Pre-recorded Videos
While live tours can cover a multitude of different areas in the community and instill trust despite distance being a barrier, it’s also nice to have resources at your team’s disposal that are already built out and can be viewed on the client’s own time. What sort of resources are we talking about? Pre-recorded videos! Building a cloud-based library of videos that showcase the community or different, unique spots around the complex, or even every available home can end up being one of the most valuable and time-saving things your team ever embarks upon.
Pre-recorded videos are evergreen content (meaning you film it once and, typically, that becomes reusable over and over and over again). If you have the right enterprise-level, cloud-based platform for managing this content, it can also become one of the most strategic tools your team has well (hint hint…tracking!). Add on top of that the limitless types of videos that you can record and the options truly are endless for the value a quality library of pre-recorded videos can add for your team.
Community and Neighborhood Overview Videos
When families move, there is much more to consider than just the home they’ll be living in. They want to know what the community offers, how the schools are, how near it is to things like restaurants, groceries, parks, and more. Figuring out what a particular family cares most about, then sending the videos that showcase those things will help to, again, give them comfort throughout the home search process and gain an understanding of what their new life in this new place could be. There’s no need to have one massive video that combines all of these key elements — break them into individual videos. Make it a la cart so that your team can send the videos that are most relevant for a particular family.
Team and Process Videos
The ‘face of the community’ for any military family moving to a new base will be your agent and your team. A big part of a family feeling comfortable with a move is feeling comfortable with whom they’re dealing with. Foster that comfort by creating videos that feature your team, maintenance staff, and any other team members that residents may interact with. The more these families “know” these people, the more comfortable they’ll be asking questions and getting comfortable with their new home. Given the stress already involved in the move, a friendly face is always welcomed. Speaking of stress — the process of moving is stressful. Alleviate some of those stresses by recording videos that walk families through the processes and procedures involved with moving to the community. Remove any guess work or added stress when it comes to move in day, paperwork needing to be filed, how to setup their internet and cable upon move in or work the hvac system — the list can go on. Taking the unexpected out move in day will make things run smoother for all involved.
Community Engagement Videos
By the time a new family has moved to your community, they have (hopefully) interacted with a live video tour, videos outlining the community and surrounding area, a personalized video of their home, some move-in videos, and a welcome video to the community! With all of that great video content proving invaluable throughout the moving process, why stop there? With all of the families living in your community, keep the videos rolling! Use pre-recorded videos to reinforce community policies instead of simply sending out mass communications or sliding notes under doors. Create videos announcing community events or highlighting how fun a resident event was. Rolling out a new amenity at the community? Create a video announcing it! Creating a sense of community early on and engaging with residents frequently will not only make the transition easier on new families, but will help the new community feel a little more like home. And that is priceless.
Military families are already making sacrifices for their country and most will never understand what they endure. Anything that we as an industry can do to make their lives even a little bit easier, smoother, and less stressful should be a no brainer. We owe so much to these families and housing should not be an unbearably difficult process for them when there are so many tools (like Realync) at our disposal to make the process easier today!
If you want to learn how to effectively implement video at your military communities, message sales@realync.com. We’re here to help!
Until next time…keep it real!
