Archive for February, 2008
A Message from Kathleen: This is the first guest post on the BRER Blog. I’m lucky that Sam Chapman agreed to contribute this post, and I look forward to his future contributions, too. The issue of requiring registration before a visitor can search the MLS on a real estate website is a hotly contested one. It may not work in every market as it has for Sam, but it’s certainly worth considering!
A Couple Changes Have Made a Big Difference
I made a couple of fundamental changes to my highly ranked Austin real estate website at the very end of November. As a result, the number of leads I have generated from the website has absolutely skyrocketed. What did I do?
First, I put a large Search Austin Homes link at the top right of every page on my website. Right below that, I put my contact information. My thinking was that people would be drawn to the link as they see it on every page. My statistics also show that around 95% of visitor time is looking at listings. Having the contact information has resulted in an average of just under one email or phone call to me per day by potential buyers. Prior to the change, I was getting around 6 per month. That is an enormous change!
The other significant change I made was forcing visitors to register to view listings. On my search by map page, people get detailed views of listings that they click on. I give one free detailed view and then ask them to register. Of the top sites that show up on Google when searching the term Austin real estate, half force registration.
Of those, mine is the only one that offers at least one free detailed view, the rest force registration right away.
How Things Changed
Before forcing registrations, my stats show that people were seeing around 10,000 detailed views of listings per month. Since the changes, people are seeing almost 40,000 detailed views. This has resulted in around 150 registrations per month. Before the changes, I was getting around 20 per month. Again, a huge increase in leads!
When people register, they have to enter a name, a phone number and an email. So far I am finding that around 70% of the information is real and will actually get me in touch with someone. Of the people my team and I are able to reach by phone or email, we’re finding that around 11% are resulting in a relationship. By this I mean ongoing phone calls, emails, appointments or custom searches being set up.
Tracking the Bottom Line
How many of these will actually close is something that I really want to see. As most internet leads are around 6-9 months or more before they actually start seeing properties in Austin, that is a number I won’t have for a while. However, I am extremely encouraged with what has happened since the beginning of December and feel that I am going to see very strong sales this year and in years to come.
This post was contributed by guest author and Austin REALTOR® Sam Chapman. Sam has lived and worked in the Austin area for almost 20 years. Sam primarily works in the south Lake Travis area and western parts of Austin, but can refer buyers to agents who specialize in parts of the greater Austin area.
This is the third in a series – see all the posts
Differences in How Buyers and Sellers Choose Agents
NAR’s 2007 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers pointed out some interesting differences in how buyers and sellers choose an agent. Keep in mind that the questionnaire that provided the basis for the Profile was sent to home buyers. The home buyers and sellers from the survey are actually the same individuals, answering from different perspectives.
The first thing that caught my attention was this statistic.
- Did the Seller use the same real estate agent for their home purchase?
- 47% - Yes
- 53% - No
I’m sure distance contributed to the reasons why the same agent wouldn’t be used for both a purchase and sale. However, the median distance the buyers moved, according to the Profile, was 13 miles, indicating that long distance moves were not the most common.
Priorities Change When Selling a Home
I wondered if anything in the Profile would indicate another reason why different agents were hired. I think part of the answer lies in the differences in how buyers and sellers choose an agent.
|
CRITERIA USED WHEN BUYING |
CRITERIA USED WHEN SELLING |
| Honest & Trustworthy - 28% | Reputation of Agent - 38% |
| Reputation of Agent - 22% | Honest & Trustworthy - 20% |
| Friend or Family - 17% | Friend or Family - 14% |
| Caring Personality /Good Listener - 10% | Caring Personality/Good Listener - 5% |
When an individual is selling their home:
- The reputation of the agent jumped 10% in importance.
- Honest and trustworthy still came in second, but even the importance of working with a friend or family decreased somewhat.
- The agent having a caring personality and being a good listener dropped in importance by 5%.
Lessons Learned
Agents need to market differently to buyers and sellers. The person looking to buy a home wants to work with someone who is warm and fuzzy: honest, trustworthy, caring and a good listener. And, that makes sense since they will be spending a lot of time with that agent .
Sellers indicated that the most important thing they wanted from a listing agent was to sell their home within a specific timeframe. Sellers are looking for someone who they think has that ability. So, the reputation of the agent is much more important, undoubtedly in terms of how effective that agent is in getting homes sold.
And, again, where reputation is an important criteria, it’s much more effective to illustrate your reputation than talk about it. A great question to ask your sellers, keeping in mind that you want to use open-ended questions, is something like this:
- How well did the timing of getting your home sold meet your objectives?
When the same person is both the buyer and seller, it means you must focus on reinforcing both sides of your personality and your business. For example, you can’t sacrifice showing your caring side to come across as an aggressive marketer. It’s an interesting line to walk.
Do you usually help your clients purchase a new home and sell their old one? How does your experience match with the responses in the NAR Profile?
If you’re not a blogging type, consider other ways to increase your visibility in your market area using established real estate social networking websites.
There are some issues with some social networking sites when it comes to real estate. If you haven’t heard about it yet, you can read the latest move from Facebook at Joel Burslem’s blog. The bottom line is that Facebook will suspend the account of anyone who is caught posting real estate listings in the marketplace rather than paying for a “Social Ad” to promote the listing.
There are other alternatives, though, that don’t cost money! One you might want to check out is the Trulia Voices website.
Everyone from consumers to real estate professionals can ask and answer questions. It’s a real opportunity to display your expertise to consumers in your market area. For more insight, check out this article on the Inman Blog.
The Inman post talks about active bloggers stepping outside of their blog to gain exposure in other places on the Internet. However, I think it’s also a great way for a non-blogger to get more involved online. Answering a consumer’s question is a lot easier than maintaining your own blog!
Whimsical Wednesday: Kid Logic
· CommentsI’m not around kids very often, so it’s always a hoot when my sister’s grandkids come to stay. They bring their parents, too, but the kids are the most amusing.
There are three grandchildren - all boys, from two different families. The oldest boy is about five, and his cousins are three and one.
Of course, there is a certain amount of preparation required. For those children who are old enough to get into things but not old enough to know better, the kitchen cupboards must be secured. I found these great gadgets to give to my sister. Each one is a plastic clamp that can be adjusted to fit on the lower double-door kitchen cabinets to prevent them from being opened. For the single door cabinets, we all just have to be vigilant. But, it’s much easier when the number of trouble spots is narrowed down.
And, the chair across the staircase upstairs does a passable job of keeping the littlest ones from taking a solitary stroll up (and/or down) the stairs.
The boys get along fairly well together. The funniest thing is that the oldest boy just loves to help out his two cousins. He tries to keep them out of trouble, when he’s not joining in, that is. And, he takes great pride in teaching them new things, reading them stories, and generally playing the big brother role.
I hadn’t really thought of how a six year old views a three year old. But, I think they really consider each other as peers, just as if they were 25 and 22. That became obvious to me a while ago when the two were playing together. It was at a time when the younger of the two was just getting some traction learning how to talk, but wasn’t very good at it yet.
The younger boy wanted something, and the older boy was trying to figure out what it was. There was a lot of back and forth “discussion” on the topic. Finally, the older boy was out of patience.
Getting to his feet, and pumping his arms in the air to emphasize each phrase, he exclaimed,
“I CAN’T UNDERSTAND A WORD YOU’RE SAYING!!!!!”
From Rags to Internet
· CommentsI was talking to an agent the other day about improving his Internet presence. His opinion was that thinking you can use the Internet to do real estate marketing is a pipe dream. And, I can understand why he’d think that. Take the Poll in the left column of this blog, for example. If you haven’t participated in our Internet Poll in the left-hand column, now would be a good time to do it!
So far, there are 28 responses, and we need more to make the results meaningful. But, of the 28 responses
- 65% (20 votes) get Little or No business from their real estate web site
- 35% (8 votes) get One-Half, The Majority or Almost All of their business from their real estate website
Even with such a small sample, there are a number of ways to interpret the results. Some people, like the agent I spoke with, look at the results and decide that turning a real estate website into a lead-generating tool is just too difficult for the normal person. It might seem like the people who are getting business from their website are either Internet gurus or just awfully lucky. But, that’s not really true.
You CAN Go From Rags to Internet!
The only difference between the people who are getting business from their website and those who spend their days knocking on doors is this: the ones making money from their website have
- a professional-looking design
- interesting tools and information for visitors
- an effective SEO strategy
Our strategic partner, Mike Parker, wrote an article for Broker Agent News relating the experience of one broker who almost closed up shop until she learned how to make the Internet work for her.
You don’t need to be an Internet guru to accomplish that. And, if you want people to help you so that you can continue to focus on your business, that’s pretty easy to accomplish, too. We assist real estate brokers and agents to create lead-generating real estate websites, addressing design, content and SEO.
Our strategic partnership with Blackwater/Compass for SEO means that we can provide our clients with a seamless process from the initial design phase through to the site ranking in the search engines.
Don’t assume Internet success is out of reach - just go for it!
