Internet Savvy Realtors Advantage to Sellers
The real estate industry has moved online with good reason – that’s where the buyers are. Real estate sales methods are being redefined, as people increasingly rely on search engines to locate precisely the house they want. 78 percent of all home buyers use the internet at some point in the home buying process today. Seventy percent of real estate firms now have a website, many of them searchable. Real Estate websites that allow people to enter their own specific preferences (price, location, bedrooms, baths, etc.) and view available listings matching those criteria have an advantage over their competition.
To gain credibility with today’s internet savvy buyers, real estate professionals must demonstrate they understand what buyers want in online - not just the homes themselves, but how they prefer to buy them.
Home buyers searching the web prefer to take an active role in their home search, rather than waiting to see what their Realtor suggests. Firms employing online methods effectively out-perform the rest, by delivering answers in the way buyers prefer; plenty of listing pictures, simple and direct facts, and listing’s that are easily found online.
For instance, when a builder client of mine decided to start a new project, I went on line and secured a domain name just for that project called Liberty Park Homes. So when someone is searching for a new home in the Ferndale, Washington area they will hopefully find www.LibertyParkHomes.com and the new homes that RH Construction are building.
Another idea would be to develop a small website entirely devoted to one particular property, with its own domain name. Its location, of course would be the name of the domain. For a listing at www.1413MyersDrive.com, for example, there would no question about where the home is located. In the example above I have the link pointing at the acutal listing and haven't set up a domain for it yet. but if it had its own unique domain, it would stand out in a high-impact way. And its front yard sign would send passers-by to the unique website for all the particulars.
Any property offered from its very own website rates extra attention – and gets it. Best of all, you don’t need to know any technical stuff at all to produce a well-designed, one-of-a-kind website. There are companies on line that offer a service to help create property-specific websites. In the past I’ve registered a domain name at Godaddy.com and used their “Website Tonite” software to create a 5 page site like for less than $5 per month hosting. Here’s an example site that I created called www.StreetofDream.com with Godaddy's software. One could easily buy a domain for a property listing and quickly develop a small website just for that listing.
It’s a pretty inexpensive way to create a website for one of your listings and have it up and running within a couple of hours. Then I will usually just link to this property site from one of my main sites and when Google and the rest of the search engines crawl my site, they find it and I’m off and running. Once the home sells, then I just close the site down and usually give the domain to the owner or hold on to it until it expires in a year. I actually had a Bellingham WA home seller that put their home back on the market after only nine months to buy another home that ended up being their Bellingham dream home. Sure glad I kept the domain name on that one.
The unique marketing strategy gives any property a competitive advantage. But it also provides you with a valuable advantage during the listing interview – one no other sales agent can match.
When it comes time for a seller to choose which Realtor brings “something extra,” a buyer-oriented website (at no cost to them!) Counts as a noteworthy listing tool.