Spanish-speaking homebuyers comprise one of the fastest-growing, yet underserved markets, in the U.S. Last year alone, Hispanic households grew by 320,000, and Hispanics accounted for 40% of all U.S. household growth. According to the Urban Institute, Hispanics will account for 55.5% of new homeowners from 2010 to 2020.
Spanish is the most spoken non-English language in U.S. homes: 37.6 million persons ages 5 years and older speak Spanish at home, according to the Pew Research Center.
The potential of this market is striking, since just 46% Hispanics currently own their own homes, reports the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals (NAHREP).
Future growth projections are staggering: Demographic projections indicate that the U.S. Hispanic population will reach nearly 120 million by 2050, a 592% increase since 1970, NAHREP reports.
The desire to buy is also there: As Gerardo “Jerry” Ascencio, chairman of the NAHREP Foundation and broker-owner of San Fernando Realty poignantly has said, “Nobody in the Hispanic community dreams and aspires to be a tenant.”
New Bilingual Automation Technology for MLS data
Imagine your virtual tours, website, curbside marketing efforts and rental inquiries all featuring the ability to speak (or narrate MLS data) in a perfect Spanish sentence-structure.
This is not the conversion of your web text into Spanish text. That’s old technology that has been available for years. This technology is very different. It’s audio-based.
VoicePad, known for English narration technology from an MLS feed, has now completed the same audio platform for Spanish.
Think about providing property information in Spanish by phone with live transfers that automatically route Spanish-speaking inquiries to Spanish-speaking agents. This technology takes the language barrier “off the table” and allows “English-only” agents to compete on Spanish-speaking lead-generation efforts. In addition, Virtual Tours can now be narrated in Spanish (and English) without the need for expensive voice talent. This is a huge breakthrough.
Many, if not most, Spanish-speaking buyers would prefer to work with someone who speaks Spanish. Granted, but without a process to assist these buyers, you lose the potential to refer this lead to someone on your team or in your office who does speak Spanish, or worse, to another company.
VoicePad innovative narrated tour technologies now replicate Spanish as well as English, in conversational syntax. VoicePad does this for both residential properties for sale and rentals, for Virtual Tours and for Mobile sites as well. It has taken the company years to sequence MLS data into the Spanish language. The result is that every MLS data feed can now speak fluent Spanish.
A sample (best viewed on a mobile device) is located here: http://42y.us/pjUE
VoicePad is currently updating 3 million tours narrated in conversational Castilian Spanish every 120 minutes, automatically from MLS data.
Don’t let language skills be a barrier to generate business from one of America’s fastest growing home buying markets, even if you don’t “Habla Español.”
