Rae Roeder, broker–owner of Rae Roeder Realty in Tallahassee, believes she’s found just the ticket to get new business: a home-design software program that lets her create professional-looking floor plans for her listings when plans aren’t available. She uses floor plans to enhance fliers, virtual tours and e-mails and to attract and please customers and clients.

“Buyers and sellers want all the information they can get, and a floor plan says it all,” says Roeder. She started using floor plans 25 years ago, when she would painstakingly measure each room in a house and draw it to scale on graph paper. Those early sketches were “pretty amateurish,” she says, but they worked. “It’s a waste of time to take someone to a home and have him or her tell you the living space won’t work.”

There are several home design programs to choose from, but Roeder likes Broderbund’s 3D Home Architect because it’s user friendly. “3D Home Architect allows even a spatially challenged non-architect to draw professional looking floor plans,” she says. She discovered the program at a Florida Association of Realtors® (FAR) computer users’ group about 10 years ago.

Here’s how Roeder puts the software to work:

1. Easily Make Plans

Roeder still measures each room (plus the windows, closets and doorways) and uses pencil and paper to sketch walls and features. But she doesn’t worry about drawing with precision. “You don’t need to be an artist,” she says. “As long as the dimensions are accurate, the [rough sketch] can be sloppy.” Back at the office, Roeder inputs the specs for the home, and the program does everything else.

FOUR HOME DESIGN SOFTWARE PROGRAMS 1. 3D Home Architect, Broderbund — $69.99; http://www.broderbund.com 2. FloorPlan 3D Design Suite 9, IMSI — $39.95; http://www.imsisoft.com 3. Professional Home Design Suite, Punch! Software — $69.99; http://www.punchsoftware.com 4. SmartDraw Floor Plan Edition, SmartDraw.com — $148; http://www.smartdraw.com

In 3D Home Architect, each floor plan starts off as a blank screen with icons to click for walls, doors, windows, cabinets, bathroom and kitchen fixtures, fireplaces, steps, electrical outlets, ceiling fans, etc. “Let’s say you’re drawing a box [shape] house — you would select the wall icon first to put in four outside walls and then fill in the inside walls,” she explains. “Then you add kitchen fixtures, doors and windows.”

In a hurry, Roeder sometimes forgets to add the finishing touches. “The windows and doors are the last items you put in, and I’ve been known to create a room or two without doors,” she laughs.

When Roeder finishes a floor plan, she prints it out, scans it and saves it in .jpg file format. “I take it into Adobe Photoshop Elements to set up the size,” she says, “and then I save it to a folder so I can pull it up every time I want to use it.”

2. Appeal to Buyers

Buyers must be able to picture themselves living in a house before they consider buying, according to Roeder. “Buyers tell me they like the little details my floor plans provide,” she says. “They want to know whether the bedroom had one closet or two, did this bathroom have a window or did it not? It may not be quite what they want, but at least they have a chance [to consider it] without looking at every house in Tallahassee.”

Out-of-town buyers find Roeder’s floor plans especially helpful. “They usually don’t come back [into town] until the week of closing,” she says. “It helps to e-mail a floor plan so they can mentally arrange their furniture.” If they don’t use e-mail, she prints out the floor plan and mails it to them.

Roeder says buyers sometimes ask for floor plans of homes that aren’t her listings and are disappointed when plans aren’t available. “I don’t think one agent in 100 does floor plans, but it really makes a difference,” she says.

3. Enhance Selling

Roeder says her floor plans add value to the promotional pieces she creates for her listings. “When I make a flier or a brochure for a listing, [the floor plan] goes on that,” she says. “Top Producer lets you import a picture, so I import my floor plan. Sellers go ape over it, and they tend to show it off.” She displays the brochures inside the property and keeps a supply in the information tubes beside her For Sale signs. “One customer took my floor plan to her banker, her designer and her financial advisor for advice about renovating the property before writing an offer,” says Roeder. For sellers who aren’t leaving the area after their home is sold, she makes a miniature of their floor plan and places it on the back of some of her business cards to create more word of mouth. “I give them to the seller to pass out to friends,” she says.

When another salesperson wants to show one of her listings, she faxes or e-mails a floor plan to him or her, and she also makes a floor plan available to the property appraiser as a courtesy. “Property appraisers tell me they like to have a floor plan ahead of time,” she says. “They have to do an outline sketch anyway, and if they’ve already got one, it’s easier to walk through it.”

4. Improve Virtual Tours

Roeder also adds a floor plan image to each of her virtual tours so viewers know where rooms are in relation to other rooms. “If somebody goes to my Web site [www.raeroederrealty.com] and clicks on Tour Featured Homes, it’ll show them the floor plan during the virtual tour and help them decide whether they want to see [the listing],” Roeder says. “I can also e-mail a link to the virtual tour to anyone who’s interested. Because it’s just a link, [the floor plan .jpg image] doesn’t mess up their computer with a large file.

“I’m a gadget geek, and real estate gives me an excuse to buy all the [tech] toys I want,” continues Roeder. “There are many other things I could do with 3D Home Architect. In the future I may try sending floor plans to cell phones. If I ever retire, I may learn to play with all the bells and whistles.”