Virtual visits haven't quite clicked with home buyers
Maryland native Virginia Hughes longed to return to the Mid-Atlantic from St. George, Utah, where she was director and assistant professor of medical laboratory science at Dixie State University.
Maryland native Virginia Hughes longed to return to the Mid-Atlantic from St. George, Utah, where she was director and assistant professor of medical laboratory science at Dixie State University.
When Neumann University in Aston offered her a post as associate professor of biology, her dream became reality. The problem: Her fall teaching schedule didn't permit house-hunting back East.
"I knew where I wanted to live" - Hughes had settled on Bear, Del. - and "when I went online to look at listings, I found David Mays, an agent who sells in the area, who helped me find something that I wanted." Not in Bear, but in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Wilmington, "a 15-minute ride on Route 202 to Aston."
Sight unseen except virtually, Hughes bought the house. She didn't actually see it until the Dec. 1 closing.
"Technology, including videos, offered an in-person perspective," said Mays, who worked with Hughes for 60 days on the purchase. "The client who does things this way has to be tech-savvy, [and] the real estate agent has to go the extra mile."
At the dawn of real estate's technological revolution, many predicted that buying homes without seeing them in person would quickly become the norm.
It hasn't exactly turned out that way.
Mays, of Berkshire Hathway Home Services Fox & Roach Realtors in Bear, said that though the number of houses bought this way is bound to increase, it won't be the new normal anytime soon.
Indeed, a survey of his brokerage's agents found that Mays was among the 11 percent with clients who made offers on houses without seeing them in person in the first nine months of 2015.
"I rarely work with homeowners who pass on the opportunity to touch, feel, and smell before going under agreement," said Mickey Pascarella, an agent with Keller Williams Real Estate in Center City.
Sight-unseen transactions, Pascarella said, tend to be all-cash purchases by investor/developers, who use the inspection clause to back out later, after on-site review, if necessary.
Marie Gordon, an agent with Berkshire Hathaway Home Services Fox & Roach Realtors in Wayne, said the recent sale of a foreclosed property she handled for an investor was done without a pre-offer visit because the seller refused to allow the buyer inside.
The buyer "walked the outside of the property without permission," said Gordon, who is a registered agent on the auction website on which the foreclosure was listed. "I have helped the buyer purchase other foreclosed properties, and this is the first time this has happened."
Her client's house had been renovated without permits and plans, and the seller "had cut into structural beams," Gordon said, but her buyer has a construction company to handle such surprises.
Clark Kendus, an agent with D. Patrick Welsh Real Estate in Swarthmore, sold a house in Morton to a sailor stationed on a U.S. Navy vessel in the Pacific who was moving to the area after his discharge.
In his place, his mother, who was from Indiana and didn't know the area, looked at houses with Kendus for a week till she found what she considered perfect for her son.
"The ship had a notary on board, and we were able to get all the power-of-attorney work done that way," Kendus said.
It might seem that new construction fits the sight-unseen profile better than previously existing homes, but South Jersey builder Bruce Paparone doesn't recall an entirely Internet sale just yet.
"We have had some recent sales where the wife is out of state and the husband has seen a model," he said. Color selections and information gathering was done via Internet, email, and phone.
"The wife did not see her new home until we were almost finished and ready for delivery," Paparone said.
Last fall, Lou Dugan was back in town from Tulsa, Okla., hoping to find a house in the Conshohocken neighborhood in which she and her husband, Jurgen Fuchs, lived before they relocated for his job.
As she was heading for the airport, Dugan, who has been a licensed real estate agent, drove past a house not on the market but that "caught my eye."
A few days later, the house went on the market, and Dugan asked agent Bob Diliberto, of Coldwell Banker Preferred in Blue Bell, with whom she had worked, to attend the open house for her.
"I offered full price," said Dugan, who saw the inside for the first time two weeks before closing.
"Life is a gamble," she said, adding that the fact the seller was an architect reduced the risk.
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