Realty Websites: Empowering or Confusing the Home Buyer or Seller?

Authored By: Tim OKeefe

Currently there is a major move in the online sector of the realty industry to make more and more mls listings freely available to the online public.

Sites like Trulia.com offer an abundance of complete listings from the MLS as well as newspapers. And the recent addition of Zillow.com covers the home sellers side in offering tax based property evaluations.

This may seem like a good thing on the surface. More listings disseminated to the masses helps to sell more property. More information empowers the consumer. Or does it?

As an ex-real estate agent myself. I used the local MLS function of sending property thru email to absolutely deluge myself with an abundance of properties and data.

I felt like the truly empowered internet consumer.

However, after about 2 months of going absolutely nowhere, I realized that too much information is not a good thing. As a professional internet marketer, and ex Realtor that served my target area, my home search was pathetic and unfocused.

Home Buying is Not Amazon Online

The consumer is not buying books. They are buying a house. Realty websites do not have a Shopping Cart for a reason. This is not e-commerce.

The purpose of the Home Listings should be to capture the consumer contact information and then serve to court them into working with you.

How do you court them? That is the subject of a whole course material, however, you must show the value of you as a Realtor, and what you can bring to the table thru your negotiation abilities, financing abilities, etc that makes your hefty commission well worth your fees.

When you offer, and frankly your National Association offers listings without opt-in. You are not only negating your only tangible asset (the MLS), but you are throwing away your biggest attraction for a visitor to opt into your marketing system.

Therefore, it is my belief that as a Realtor you should use your voice and the thousands of dollars you spend with your various associations, and then educate them into not "giving away the farm", just because some consultant or lawyer tells them it empowers the consumer.

Copyright 2006 Tim OKeefe

Spider Juice Technologies offers SEO, PPC and blog marketing for the Real Estate community. Sign up for their newsletter at www.spiderworkz.com and find out more tips thru their Real Estate Marketing podcast blog at houseblogger.typepad.com/real_estate_podcast/

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