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Archive for the ‘Online marketing’ Category

12

If you are selling your home – please read this!

Posted on: March 17th, 2010 | Filed in Featured, Online marketing

Perfect image of houses croppedAn early lesson I recall when starting out to write this blog, was that if ever you feel that you need an inspiration for a blog post – just recall a recent conversation. The topic of the conversation is sure to be of benefit to share.

Well this post, although stimulated by a telephone conversation, was not originated through a dry spell of me searching for a topic – quite the opposite, there seems so much to write about real estate these days! However as you will see this issue is a pet issue for me. So here goes!

Why is it that so many properties featured on this website and in fact so many websites, showcase such poor photographs?!

This is a serious question, and it was asked of me by a professional photographer who was struggling to get his local real estate agents to take seriously his service. (as an aside I would like to point out this is not an advertorial for any particular photo service or photographer, this is simply something that I think is really important. In the spirit of openness and reciprocity the photo service he works for is Essential Images)

As we spoke and we discussed this issue, it struck me that whilst the real estate profession should be motivated to present the very best images for every property they market on the web, there is a sense that vendors should be far more demanding of this from agents. This seems so strange, after all where else do people begin searching for property these days? At the time of the last research nearly a year ago close to 80% of all buyers used online in the recent week to search for property; whilst traditional media such as newspapers and magazines languished at just 31% and 46% respectively. In the US the percentage is over 93% of all buyers using online search.

We all know the expression – a picture is worth a thousand words. Well in the same vein when it comes to advertising property online; 20 photos are probably worth a hundred time more than half a dozen photos; and a high quality photo set for a property is worth thousands!

Courtesy of the photographer I spoke to, here are some of his examples of the difference professional photos can make to a property presentation online.

Lounge basicLounge professional

The presentation of this lounge is considerably enhanced through the use of the right light balance to better show the relationship between indoors and outside.

bathroom basicbathroom professional

Whilst the bathroom may not be the most appealing part of the house, good lighting makes all the difference; in this case bringing the room to life and show off the polished floor.

deck basicdeck professional

The all important exterior deck can be challenging to photograph right, without the expert eye. Whilst a bight cloudless day shows off the appeal of the deck; without the right skills the interior is left as a dark hole!

The web is a visual medium. The human eye can scan a page of images of property in a mere second or two. In that time your house (be that your house as the vendor, or as the appointed agent has to be seen and then clicked on to elicit interest and a further review.

At that stage the photos, and nowadays that selection of photos should be extensive (ie. more than 20) needs to captivate the interested buyer to engage them and hook them in, so they then go on to read the details and really consider the property for a physical inspection.

This all seems so logical. Why would you not get a professional photographer to undertake an extensive photo shoot? – yet so many properties on this website are poorly presented with barely a handful of images some of them taken with a camera phone.

If the answer is money – then think again. Most photographers charge much less than $500, many times less than $250. Yes; that has to be paid up front. But then if you are serious about selling you need to help sell the house, and in this cluttered and competitive market how else are you going to standout? – certainly not if you only have 5 average quality photos.

The median price of property across the country is $350,000; even in the cheapest region Southland the median price is $190,000. Why then would you not spend $250 to really help the sale of a $190,000 property – that amounts to just 0.13% of the sale price. Or think of it another way $250 is little more than a week’s mortgage payment. A well presented property is far more likely to sell faster and therefore save you more than a single week’s interest on the mortgage.

0

Twitter – carving out a valuable space in our day to day world

Posted on: March 11th, 2010 | Filed in Online marketing, Technology

twitter-birdOne of the great benefits of a blog is the ability to go back in time to review old posts and see how issues have changed and then refer to them. So when it comes to Twitter I find myself writing a third post on this subject.

My first post was back in August 2008 and at that time I had set up a Twitter account but felt a bit like a sideline spectator trying to better understand the benefits outside of event commentaries.

Some 6 months later and I found myself with 3 months of active usage under my belt and a growing appreciation of the benefits of this communication technology.

So a further year on and I find that Twitter is now my “first place” for news as well as status updates on my world and the connections I want and need to make with the world around me. It is more important than news websites and RSS feeds and with the many applications drawing on the API it is conspicuously becoming a more frequent check than my email.

Simply put Twitter is a live feed into the world I am interested in which has a large component of real estate, and sourcing real estate news can be undertaken so easily by following the key people who like me use Twitter to highlight their latest blog post or direct people to interesting stories on the web.

Every time a major event or news story breaks I can now be assured that if I am at my laptop I will hear about it / see it on Twitter – no longer do I have to refresh the news sites. With mobile clients even when away from my laptop I know truly the world is at my finger tips.

For me Twitter is certainly not inane banter – it is a business tool to aid productivity and comprehension. It is also a marketing tool to ensure that my aspiring communications about this real estate industry are spread and read widely. I do that by cultivating a loyal following through valuable referrals to information and articles of interest – the very essence of reciprocity.

So 15 months into serious Twitter usage it is time to further tailor my approach to Twitter. We have launched a Realestate.co.nz Twitter account.

Realestate.co.nz (realestateconz) on Twitter-1

From now on the tweets on the Realestate.co.nz (@realestateconz) and my own account (@alistairnz) will  be clearly separated. Realestate.co.nz Twitter account will focus on news and articles purely related to the industry of real estate. This will comprise articles on the industry for both agents and consumers alike, it will also draw attention to recent blog posts written by agents who blog both on their own and on the Voices platform on Unconditional. The account will also be able to provide a status update to the website – should anything need urgently communicating.

As for my own account, I will tend to use this to share observations and insights into things I think are important – real estate certainly, but also technology and business in general.

So please come join us and follow Realestate.co.nz on Twitter and/or follow me on Twitter.

3

1,000,000 real estate listings!

Posted on: March 2nd, 2010 | Filed in Featured, Online marketing, Website searching

Champagne explosion

At 4.17am this morning we processed our one millionth listing onto the website of realestate.co.nz – a significant milestone!

The website began life in August 2006 when the former REINZ website of RealENZ was shut down and the new website burst onto the market. Since that time over 1 million listings have been featured on the website over the past 1,290 days – that equates to an average of 775 per day or around 32 new listings every hour of everyday.

Realestate.co.nz is the most comprehensive website for all categories of real estate listings in NZ as marketed by licensed real estate agents. The site covers the full spectrum from homes for sale and rent, commercial property for sale or lease, farms and agricultural land as well as businesses for sale.

More than half of the million listings have been made up of properties for sale. A total of 545,000 have been homes for sale – the biggest year was 2007 with 165,000 new listings comparing with the quietest year last year with just 125,000.

Commercial property for lease and for sale have comprised over 90,000 listings with a steady growth in each of the past 2 years – 2009 alone saw just over 30,000 new listings come onto the market.

A massive 77,ooo listings have been featured for building sections. This sector reached a peak in 2008 with 21,000 before falling back somewhat last year to 17,000.

Since day one realestate.co.nz has enjoyed the support of the vast majority of the real estate profession – a commitment that has grown stronger over the years to see now over 94% of all licensed offices using the site – far ahead of the nearest competitor Trade me property.

Taking the live data as of today – realestate.co.nz has for example 50,184 homes for sale. This compares to 42,499 on Trade me.

As most people appreciate one of the key differences between the two sites is that Trade me takes adverts from homeowners looking to sell privately. In a recent NBR article Trade me highlighted that 16% of their property listings were from private sellers – applying this calculation would mean that today 35,699 listings from licensed real estate agents are featured on Trade me Property as compares to 50,184 on realestate.co.nz. In other words a search on Trade me only shows 60% of the local market for real estate listings of homes marketed by licensed real estate agents.

Comparable licensed real estate listings - trade me property & realestate.co.nz Feb 2010

Note: The NBR article states that Trade me features 100,000 properties – this is the number of total listings covering all categories that are displayed on the website.

The category of homes for sale excludes lifestyle property and sections for sale but does include apartments and townhouses as well as units and home and income properties.

0

Google real estate search gets an advertising boost

Posted on: February 17th, 2010 | Filed in Online marketing

Google clearly has real estate in its sights as it begins the new decade with a more aggressive stance to challenge what is clearly turning out to be its main competitor -- Apple.

The once cosy partnership that saw reciprocal governance seats on respective boards now sees Google entering Apple’s home territory with the Nexus One smart phone, coupled with a rumoured Google tablet device to challenge the Apple iPad territory.

Google is ambitious and clearly in its judgment it has a lot to offer the real estate market -- not least of which its very successful advertising model.

As yet the extent of Google real estate has been limited to the capability of a functional enhancement of Google map search - limited here refers to the exposure (or rather the lack of it) that Google has applied to this service. This is set to change with the release of a series of online adverts providing a humorous intro to the benefits of real estate map search.

The campaign introduces the yellow Google man as he navigates the real world of property aided by the map search online.

Australia is the target audience of the adverts -- a country that has been hesitant in supporting Google maps search -- certainly when it comes to the 2 leading websites of realestate.com.au and domain.com.au which have judged that providing content to Google is a competitive threat. Both of these websites have decided not to feed listings to Google to thereby allow these properties to be presented on Google maps. Despite this Google report that some 1,000+ real estate companies have so far supplied listing content direct to Google, in effect by-passing the major 2 real estate websites.

Here in NZ there has been a more passionate adoption of support for the Google map search from real estate companies and realestate.co.nz in particular -- thereby making the map based search a more valuable experience for NZ property searchers.

5

A significant decade for real estate closes – the future will be challenging

Posted on: January 20th, 2010 | Filed in Online marketing, Other interesting reads:, Real Estate Industry

The last 10 years witnessed some incredible highs and lows in NZ real estate – at its peak in the month of March 2005 houses were being sold at the rate of 368 a day – that is close to 33 an hour. At the other extreme in January 2009 sales stalled to a low of just 3,706 – a daily rate of just 120.

In pricing terms the decade started with an average NZ home costing $174,850 – in today’s money that would equate to $222,411. By the end of the decade that average NZ home cost $369,825 a rise of 66% over the decade. If you had decided to sell in that house in November 2007 when the market peaked then that house would have seen an inflation adjusted rise of 77% from the start of the decade.

At the start of 2000 the process of searching for a home likely involved a meeting with an agent early in the process as access to information as to what was on the market very much resided in their offices. The internet was used for property search but not as the primary means. Back in January 2000 there was only one website aggregating listings from various sources RealENZ (the predecessor of Realestate.co.nz) – the monthly traffic to the site was around 60,000 visitors as probably less than 20% of buyers used the web.

REALENZ - NEW ZEALAND LARGEST REAL ESTATE DATABASE ON NEW ZEALAND INTERNET-1In January 2010 78% of buyers turn to the web first when searching for real estate and the monthly audience for all monitored websites is over 1,300,000 unique visitors. This has largely placed the task of searching firmly in the hands of buyers with a vast amount of additional information accessible to educate and inform buyers mostly thanks to Google and their ability to organise the world’s collective knowledge and make it universally accessible.

So as we start this new decade and consider how the industry will change in the next 10 years I was prompted to share the following summary from Brad Inman written as the introduction to last week’s Real Estate Connect Conference held in New York attended by over 1,800 delegates from around the world. Brad is highly respected in the industry as the publisher of Inman News and a knowledgeable and insightful observer of the industry.

“The first decade of the new century ended last month. What began in a boom and ended in a bust, the real estate market, is slowly coming alive. Along the road to recovery is a raft of innovation that has enabled the smart and technology savvy real estate agent/broker to survive. Combine the technology transformation with a revived market and change will accelerate dramatically in the coming 24 months.

Think of these changes in phases. Phase one included a greater number of steps in the home buying and selling process being digitized and automated, allowing consumers to more intelligently navigate real estate deals. In addition, the Internet has enabled home buyers through maps, search, AVM’s and MLS data (US centralised Multiple Listing Service) to structure their own home hunt, in one way relieving the agent/broker but reshaping their world along the way.

Because of technology, consumer needs are changing, and smart agents are transforming their business practices to focus on these new expectations. Technology – communication and information delivery – has become a central part of the services that home buyers and sellers expect and that savvy agents are providing.

Instant online real estate intelligence will be the next big change as consumers rely more on rich live data feeds, social media and local metrics to make house buying and selling decisions.

These innovations will change the role of the agent and the broker again. At one time, the listing data was perceived as the central value proposition of the industry, but that has changed with ubiquitous listing data. Then the agent became more of a counselor, teacher and advisor, which will evolve as Internet real estate intel becomes more sophisticated and matures.

In the future the role of the agent will be to focus on the gnarly often confusing transaction and direct and move it along. Smart agents are using technology to make that process easier and less confusing for their customers. The agents with the best technology will find and close more deals online and dwarf their slower-to-adopt competitors. Thanks to technology adoption, their business will scale and they will capture greater market share by closing more deal efficiently”.

0

Some genuine home truths about home buying

Real Estate_ Everyone_s an expert | Stuff.co.nzIf there is one thing more certain in NZ these days than the latest political scandal or sporting event, it is the view people have to real estate and the purchase of a property.

It is so true that everyone has an opinion and every opinion is the polar opposite of everybody else’s!

It was with this in mind that my eye was caught by a great blog post by Jane Yee, who writes on Stuff.co.nz. Jane is a classic Gen X / Gen Y and her life is played out through her regular blog entitled the “Girls Guide”. Now there are two really important things to reflect on at this stage (i) Jane is of the age that most people start to buy property, and (ii) Jane writes from a woman’s perspective which is as is well known very much the influential voice in real estate transactions in the case of couples.

Her most recent post “Real Estate, Everyone’s and expert” is one of the clearest perspectives I have read on the consumer psyche of buying or searching for property I have ever read. It should be mandatory reading for anyone in the real estate industry. Added to Jane’s excellent prose is over 60 comments from “people like her” that further add to the richness. I really urge everyone to read and comment.

By way of dissection, below I have distilled what I consider to be the key takeaways I see as pivotal to the process – valuable sources of focus for ambitious operators in this industry.

  1. Buying a home despite what many believe it to be is not always a rental investment property. Many people just want to satisfy their emotional desire to own a home – it is also a great form of forced savings
  2. The process of house hunting is time consuming, enormously time consuming involving – daily review of listings (I clearly need to introduce Jane to Realestate.co.nz as well as Trade Me, after all Realestate.co.nz does feature a more complete view of whats on the market), as well as weekend open homes
  3. The activity is very much a self managed exercise.
  4. Everyone has an opinion / piece of advice. At the end of the day the collective wisdom as represented by the comments is that you have to make that decision yourself and accept the implications.
  5. Your key partner in the process seem to be the mortgage broker rather than the real estate agent
  6. Unfortunately real estate agents tend to be seen (and demonstrate the behaviour) of being seen as purveyors of other people’s listings
  7. There are huge emotions involved in real estate process – the heartache of missing out, matched to the desire to find just the right place
  8. Home buying has a benefit in a sense of control, something that can not be attained through renting and therefore financial comparisons are not always relevant
11

To what extent does price marketing effect property appeal?

Posted on: January 17th, 2010 | Filed in Agent Tips, Buying / Selling a home, Online marketing

There have been regular articles and commentary throughout 2009 related to the merits or shortcomings of advertising property with a price or not; whether to market as an an auction, or to display no price “and let the market decide”!

Many views and opinions lie behind these approaches. I decided (as I often do) to dig into the numbers and see what the facts say. Is there more evidence that displaying a price increases viewings and what is the predominant method of price marketing for property?

Judged purely on consumer feedback I would have been drawn to say that putting a price on a property would be the best approach as we regularly receive emails from users of the site, advocating the full and transparent displaying of a price on every property.

Realestate.co.nz breakdown of listings by price marketing 2009Firstly the fact is that the most popular method of marketing a property on the web as judged through all property listings in 2009 was a fixed price – 63% of all properties featured on the site were marketed with a clear price.

As property price ranges rise there is a move towards other forms of price marketing. In the sub $200k range a fixed price represents a majority 68% of all listings, whereas for property over a $1m it falls to just 37%. Between $200k and $500k it is 67% and between $500k and $1m it is 54%. So agents seem to favour less specific price indications as property values rise.

Realestate.co.nz breakdown of listings by price marketing 2009 - property priced over $1mIn the $1m plus category of the property market the most popular pricing method was “Negotiation” representing 38% of all listings just ahead of the fixed price at 37%. Third place comes Auctions with 14%.

Auctions are more significantly favoured interestingly for high price properties. Between $500k and $1m is the peak of Auction pricing with 15% of all listings in this category being marketed as an auction, over $1m it is 14% and in the below $200k category the level is 11% and interestingly between $200k and $500k it is only 7% being marketed as an auction.

Tenders are one of the least popular means of marketing properties representing just 1% of all listings, although in the higher price category of between $500k and $1m and over $1m it represented close to 2%.

Having outlined the make up of listings by pricing method the big question was, is there any appreciable difference in viewing performance between the differing pricing methods – do property with a clear price receive proportionality any more viewing??

The bottom line is no! – properties without a price are not ignored by viewers!

In terms of viewing properties there is interestingly very little difference in the relative viewing between properties with a price and properties without a displayed price. This did come as somewhat of a surprise as some of the extreme comments of emails we receive state that these people completely ignore properties without a price.

Realestate.co.nz breakdown of listings by price marketing 2009 - Viewing by price marketingOverall if anything Auctions actually generated more viewings than listings in general by around 11%. This could be because auctions are marketed for a shorter period of time and tend to focus attention and generate repeat viewings online prior to the auction.

Realestate.co.nz breakdown of listings by price marketing 2009 - Viewings by priceThe other very noticeable fact is that higher priced properties are viewed more than lower price properties – this could be around aspiration from prospective or casual viewers of the site, or could be that simply higher priced properties are just more attractive!!

Note: This analysis is based on all properties featured on the website of Realestate.co.nz during 2009 – a total of 87,500 listings. The price range segments quoted are reflective of the displayed price, or the indicative range, which is provided by the agent to us to use to power the search result, whilst not being displayed on the site. For these properties with a price range we used the mid point average as a price guide.
4

Out of date information on web listings damages agent reputation

Posted on: January 11th, 2010 | Filed in Agent Tips, Online marketing, Other interesting reads:

iStock_000006985948Small lndscapeThe Christmas and New Year period is a time of year to relax and unwind. For the real estate industry it is the calm before the storm as January tends to be a hectic time of house hunting – certainly judging by traffic to real estate website which sees the highest level of visitors over the next few weeks.

With this backdrop it does surprise me and to be honest frustrate me that some in this industry omit to update information of their listings on the web over this critical period. Let me explain my frustration.

Just yesterday my wife and I decided that we were keen to explore the idea of a new house for this new year. Scanning the web we found some interesting properties – we narrowed it down to 2 properties. One property contained within the details on realestate.co.nz the fact that the property had an open home 1pm to 1.45pm Saturday and Sunday. So eager to enjoy a beautiful day to view a prospective property we drove round to find a deserted house – no open home, no real estate agent!

Now I know exactly why this situation arose. The house in question was listed at the end of November and on the for sale board in the street it actually said “Deadline for offers – 17 December”. So there was clearly no intention for the property to be an open home on the 10th January. But why had the website not been updated !!

But image for a minute that I was not involved in this industry – maybe I am moving to Auckland or NZ and am in the city and want to find a house – I rely on the web (why shouldn’t I, it is the most comprehensive source of property information). To me this house should have been open for viewing yesterday – or else the details on the listing should have been amended.

I should not have to rely on calling an agent or picking up a paper – the web should be and must be the most complete, accurate and up to date source of information of properties for sale – not a forgotten archive of what was listed day, weeks or months ago. Real estate is a service business and the service this agent left me experiencing was one that would not encourage me to use them in the future or to recommend them.

So a New Year wish from me to the real estate industry – please look at the web this year and from now on, as the live picture of your listings – update them, review them and in so doing help people like me who want to buy a property to use it to make my life easy.

8

The next major technology challenge for real estate – 3D!

Posted on: December 7th, 2009 | Filed in Online marketing, Technology

istock_000008454256xsmallHeading as we are to the end of the decade prompts me to wonder – what will be the “next big thing” for 2010 and beyond?

So I will stick my neck out and say that the next decade will bring a radical change to the real estate industry processes borne of the transformative technology of the visual images we will see on every device in the future. That transformation will come from the switch from 2D to 3D.

To be clear I am not envisaging the adoption of the current version of 3D complete with coloured lens glasses – no! the technology I foresee will be a totally immersive and life-like experience.

I cannot claim to have come up with this prediction – for that I have to thank Phil McKinney the global CTO (Chief Technology Officer) of HP who in a recent interview with the Tech Weekly team at the Guardian podcast in the UK laid out his vision of the future focused around 3D.

So how would 3D imaging radically change real estate?

Well think for a moment around this analogy – the current 2D imaging we see every minute of every day is akin to the very first moving pictures – they were a marvel and without sound relied on captions to provide dialogue. Then came the talkies and some wondered why people would want to have sound – that view lasted all of 5 minutes before sound and image became the norm. So it will be with 3D – there are those that say “why do we need it” – until we experience it.

So imagine this world of 3D – the ability in the case of real estate to genuinely and authentically undertake Open Homes – true, lifelike experiences at the click of a mouse.

With this type of experience for all properties there will be no need for 150 words of description for a property, as the images will be streamed in real time to your viewing device; which will not be  a 17″ laptop or desktop PC, but a 50″ TV monitor.

Browsing through photos will still be the first step of search, but each property will be able to be experienced in a comprehensive fashion; investigating every room of a property from every angle in a truly immersive manner. Added to which you will be able to add your own furniture and colour scheme to ensure you can fit, and that the house fits you!

So how will this impact the real estate profession? – it is likely that we will see changes around the marketing of properties. It is quite possible that the marketing of properties will become an outsourced service. Specialised companies will be contracted by real estate agents to document digitally every property to enable a comprehensive selection of still and moving 3D images to be created.

Removing this task of content creation is great news for the real estate profession, freeing them up to focus their skills directly to the task of facilitating the sale. Bringing together the buyers and seller and providing guidance, advice, local knowledge and statistical insight to ensure that the purchase is executed with clarity and efficiency which satisfies both parties to the sale.

The technology for 3D is not quite there as yet, but something like this certainly has the ability to come upon us speedily. Rest assured when it does realestate.co.nz will be embracing it to add richness to the experience of property searching – we plan to be here providing services to property searchers and the real estate industry way into the next decade and beyond!

15

Do you really need to subscribe to another property website?

Posted on: November 27th, 2009 | Filed in Agent Tips, Buying / Selling a home, Featured, Online marketing

istock_000007459744xsmallThis opinion piece is written primarily to address a question that I seem to be hearing more and more from within the real estate industry.

It also has relevance to property owners looking to sell your property. That is because I believe many agents when presenting a marketing campaign will boast – “we will feature your property on 5 websites” – with the next agent boasting “well we will place it on 9 websites!”

The reality is the number of websites is completely irrelevant – you could be on a million websites and still be missing the most important website – that is the point – you have to be on the right site – not every site.

Additionally the idea that your house in particular or NZ property in general should be featured on a US or UK sites is a misnomer – people from overseas do not look for NZ property on a UK site or an American site – they are smarter than that and seek out a NZ site.

Lastly the notion of an “International Property” website is at best misleading, and at worst a waste of money – except if you consider Google to be “The International Property Website”.

Given this preamble here is my address to the real estate profession on this topic.

As a real estate professional you clearly have a responsibility to promote your client’s listings to the optimal extent you can. Clearly promotion these days involves the web as the key medium used by property buyers. However, a critical question should be asked as to how many websites you should feature those listing on?

One of the greatest benefits of the web is that it has almost limitless capacity – estimated these days in the region of over 1 trillion web pages! – but clearly within this number are a significant proportion that are never going to be viewed – with a classic 80:20 rule applying – potentially in the case of the web and any specific category on the web more like the 95:5 rule, or even the 99.99:0.01 rule!

It is for this reason that I believe that you should think before offering your listings to be presented on just any website that happens to come along. In my judgement there are a number of questions that you should ask yourself or the prospective website.

  1. A website is meaningless unless it has visitors – you should ask the owner of any website to provide statistics such as Nielsen or Google Analytics. The key metric is unique browsers, this measures unique visitors and should allow you to judge and compare websites based on true audited audiences. Another critical issue is true traffic – not how many visitors they think they will have or how many they had last year – how many last week or last month.
  2. A website is a business – you should ask the owner of any website how they make money to pay to support the site. Are they relying on advertising or are they expecting you to pay. The question you should ask at this stage is “who needs who, the most” – is this website looking to use your listings to attract an audience to then make money from advertising?
  3. A website needs to have a track record and a planned future – you should ask the owner of any website how long they have operated and how they will support the website in the future. You do not want to find that the website closes down in 2 months or worse still is sold to someone else that you have no relationship with.
  4. A website should have a clear policy on copyright – you should get a copy of any websites terms and conditions. Make sure that you retain copyright such that this website cannot “sell” your listings / content onto anyone else for their profit; nor can they alter or change any of the content without your permission.

The expression of “there is no such thing as a free lunch” applies equally to the web as it does to any other form of business; and just as in any other area of business you have to be honest and say to yourself – do you want to waste your time uploading, managing, reviewing and checking your listings on 6 or 10 websites when in reality more than half of them generate very little traffic, no enquiries, but do take up your time?

The consumer in today’s online world is getting smarter – they more and more turn to Google to answer their everyday questions. Google does one thing exceptionally well – it makes sense out of the complexity that is the mass of information available to us these days. It is Google’s stated aim to organise and make accessible the world’s information. That being the case why not let Google help you judge as to which websites to put your content on.

Think about your prospective buyers for your home or one of your listings. Think about the kind of question they would type into Google – now do that yourself. Have a look at the results – these results on the first page should be your guide, these are the websites you should be on.

google-search

If you were to be really clinical then there were only a few websites you should place your listings on.

Naturally every listing should be on your own company website as well as major property portals. The reason for this is the fact that people want ease of searching and value comprehensive content that is what a major property portals can offer you.

So don’t be suckered into the first offer that comes by email saying that they have just the site you have always been looking for! – after all if you had been looking for such a site would you not have already found it and be on it!!

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