As a real estate agent, it’s safe bet that you’re both short on time and working with a stretched budget. On top of this, you need to use your limited budget to find new prospective buyer and seller clients, win listing presentations, and last but not least, market your listings.
Single property websites are one way to achieve all three goals, at a budget friendly cost of about $10-20 per listing. In this article I’ve boiled down the five main reasons to add a single property website to your bag of marketing tools:
1. Sellers love them. I learned this lesson firsthand after a recent listing. During my listing presentation, I gave my clients about 50 pieces of paper along with about two dozen reasons why they should work with me, one of which was that I would create a single property website for their listings. After I won the listing, I assumed they just skimmed everything and didn’t think the single property website was even that important to them. At the time, I was working with a new single property website provider (who charged about $700 for photos and the site, by the way), and she didn’t get the site live for several days after my listing started. Guess what the sellers asked me several times right after their listing started? That’s right, it was “where is our single property website?”. It was the first thing they looked for, and obviously was an important factor in their decision to work with me and a major reason I won the listing.
2. Potential buyers love them. Ask any candid real estate agent about the purpose of an open house, and they’ll tell you its to generate more buyer and seller clients for themselves. Top agents know that a professionally run open house (multiple signs, spotlessly clean, nice brochures/ table display, even refreshments) leaves a good impression on buyers and neighbors/ sellers that visit. Top agents also know that most people pick the agent who left the best impression on them. The exact same logic applies online: Top agents go the extra mile and leave great impressions on all buyers who visit their online listings. If you were a buyer looking online, would you consider working with an agent with average online marketing or one who stands out with professional marketing?
3. Potential Sellers love them. Just like with open houses, buyers aren’t the only ones viewing your listings. Curious neighbors (curious because they’re considering selling!) look at for sale properties in their neighborhood online too. These potential sellers are viewing your marketing with an even more critical eye, because it’s what they can expect if they pick you. Again, if you were selling, how would you differentiate who the best agent is? It’s all about standing out from the crowd.
4. They’re ridiculously inexpensive. Single property websites range from $10-$50 flat cost per listing. Unlike online or offline ads, there’s no monthly costs and they last for a whole year. Even better, some companieslet you set up a preview version that you can bring in to your listing presentation for free; you only pay if you win the listing! Or you can create a blog and set up your own property site from a blog company such as wordpress. When you think of the return from one extra sale, the return on investment is dramatic.
5. They’re ridiculously easy. Most real estate agents groan at the thought of entering a new listing into their local MLS. There’s sometimes hundreds of fields, things have to be entered in a very specific way, and the MLS can be downright cranky sometimes and erase it all because you missed a field! The newest generation of single property sites are designed with the customer in mind, and can usually be done in less than five minutes.
Michael is an active real estate broker and writes frequently on real estate marketing. Michael is also the founder of My Single Property Websites, a web 2.0 marketing tool that lets real estate agents create stunning virtual tours and single property websites easily. He also writes on the Real Estate Marketing Blog there.
[tags]single property websites, single property website, virtual tour, virtual tours, free property sites[/tags]
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