That’s the rallying cry of Jim Liptak, C.A.R.’s treasurer. Liptak, like many
brokers, keeps a careful eye on real estate trends and issues, and he knows
that many real estate clients begin their house hunt on the Internet. This
trend—no, sea change—causes Liptak to reconsider his advertising options,
including online advertising, which is slowly gaining acceptance but still
meets with resistance from agents and their home-selling clients.
“I think most agents are struggling with whether they should [advertise] online
or not,” says Liptak, who’s been a brokerfor 17 years. “I believe there is an
industry-wide reluctance. If you look at the demographic of the average agent,
the average age is over 50. They are used to the same print media and
advertising models they have used for years."
Those models, he says, don’t cut the mustard in 21st-century real estate, and
there’s data to prove it. According to various studies, including the
CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®’ 2007 Internet Vs. Traditional Buyer study,
72 percent of home buyers start their searches online. That means they’re
picking up a mouse before they’re picking up a newspaper.
And why not? There are countless benefits to the buyer: property photo albums,
virtual walkthroughs, interactive maps, mortgagecalculators, and so on—items no
newspaper or magazine ad can match. It would make little sense for a seller to
choose a static, space-challenged print listing over a roomy, engaging,
information-packed online ad.
By the same token, there are numerous advantages for agents. Online ads
generally cost less than their print equivalents. They reach a global audience,
not just the readers in the newspaper’s circulation area. And they can actually
save time: According to Leslie Tyler, vice presidentof online marketing for
ZipRealty.com, buyers who use the Internet actually visit fewer homes. “That
saves the agent time in having to do showings,” she says. “The agent can spend
less time in the car driving the client around."
Even better, she says, online ads are much easier to track. “With offline
advertising, it’s not very precise. Online, if you put an advertisement on a
Web site, you can track how many people clicked on the ad, how many people
visited your site asa result of the ad, how many bought or sold a house. You
can even track between Web sites to see which one has the higher ROI for
you.”
“You’ve got to be able to track the response, which is very difficult to do
with paper,” agreesJohn Pinto, broker and owner of John V. Pinto &
Associates, San Jose. Pinto says he’s made a “shift” this year away from paper
brochures and brochure boxes, instead putting money into eye-catching virtual
tours and other buyer-friendly online features. “We understand that when [the
ads] get populated to all the significant Web sites, consumers will linger
longer on those listings.”
Pinto is quick to point out that it’s not enough to simply move your
advertising to the Web: You need to be prepared for the results. “If you’re
seriously thinking about making a shift, make sure you’ve got a whole system
set up to respond to the online consumer,” he says. “Today’s consumer does
expectan immediate response. Anything longer than an hour and they’re not even
going to remember who you are.”
Of course, some agents will find all this daunting and opt for the simplicity
and familiarity of print ads. To them, Liptak offers this advice: “Nothing is
constant but change, especially in our industry. That is what we are seeing
with print versus online [advertising].It will change, and if you don’t change
with it, you lose.”
How to Push Eyeballs to Your SiteIn an ideal universe, home buyers who search
Google or Yahoo for “California homes for sale” would land directly on your Web
doorstep. In reality (and realty), it takes a little legwork to get the big
search engines to recognize your site, let aloneput it atop the results
page.Google, Yahoo, and other search engines will eventually add your site to
their indexes, but that’s like waiting for the new Yellow Pages to come out and
hoping someone finds your ad. Instead, get proactive, starting withGoogle Base
for Real Estate (base.google.com), a site that enables you to submit listings
for inclusion in Google Housing searches.There are several ways to go about
this. If you have just a small batch of listings—say, a dozen or less—you can
post them individually using a Web form. Just fill in the details (price,
property type, number of bedrooms, etc.), cut and paste a detailed description
from your existing listing, then upload as many as 15 photos.You can also
export listings from yourdatabase and upload them directly to Google
Base—obviously a much more efficient solution than manually entering them one
by one. However, if you’re not familiar with things like feeds and database
file formats, you’ll need to involve your tech-support staff. If you don’t have
one, Google may be able to retrieve your listings directly from your MLS,
though this requires some contracts and about a month to set up.Any listing
viewed via a Google Housing search will direct the user toyour site—two birds
with one stone. But you should also submit your site directly to Google Base
for indexing
(http://tinyurl.com/259hbx
) so it has the potential to appear in regular Google
searches. Googlemakes no promises as to whether your site will actually get
indexed (nor where it will appear in search results), but it’s certainly worth
the three minutes it’ll take you to complete the Web form.As for making your
site stand out from the crowd, Google Search “Evangelist” Adam Lasnik offers
these suggestions: “In the crowded field of online real estate sites and
listings, Webmasters should focus on offering compelling content or tools to
help boost organic rankings,” he says. “At the page level, revising titles and
meta descriptions to be consistently unique and helpful to users can also
significantly improve both a site’s presence in Google and the amount of
relevant search result click-throughs the site receives.“Webmasters should also
check out our regularly updated Webmaster Central
(www.google.com/webmasters
),” Lasnik adds. “From here, they can learn how the Googlebot views their site,
troubleshoot indexing issues, see how others link to their site, browse
hundreds of Webmaster-specific help documents, and even share tips and get help
with other Webmasters in our discussion group.”
Consumers Rate Real Estate Sites
Shopping for ahome is starting to look a lot like shopping for books on Amazon,
with buyers strolling the virtual aisles of real estate sites in search of
houses that meet their needs and budget.
Ever wonder which sites buyers like best, and why?
USA Today recently compared 10 of them
(http://tinyurl.com/2jqcan
), ranging from AOL Real Estate to ZipRealty.com. The newspaper searched for
homes in Arlington, Va., priced below $750,000 and discovered “sharply
varyingresults.”
For example, although the Metropolitan Regional Information System, Inc.,
revealed 60 homes for sale (and 20 with contracts pending) for the specified
city and ZIP code, a search of Coldwell Banker produced just four listings.
However, thereview cited lots of positive qualities about the site, including
its interactive map, price comparison index (which lets buyers see what
comparable homes would sell for in other cities), price estimates for specific
properties, and “good calculators.”
AOL Real Estate produced an equally sizable list of negative qualities,
starting with its all-important search function: Though powered by Realtor.com,
the “AOL search process [is] cumbersome.” The site received further demerits
foran out-of-date article on states’ home prices and a credit report that costs
$12 per month if you don’t cancel a required membership within 30 days.
Ultimately, the sites that showed an increase in visitors over the previous
year (Coldwell, Re/Max, and Yahoo Real Estate among them) were those offering
easy site navigation, lots of data, and inventive features. Newcomer Zillow
received low marks for its inaccurate “Zestimates” and high marks for its “Make
Me Move” feature, which “lets you name the price you would move for,” and its
option to receive estimates via cell phone. ZipRealty.com garnered high marks
for allowing prospective buyers and agents to post reviews of toured homes, but
low results for requiring users to register to search for homes.
In addition to being interesting reading, these reviews can help you decide
what features and data to add to your own site and learn what shortcomings to
avoid.
Rick Broida is California Real Estate magazine’s “Technology”
columnist and the author of How to Do Everything with Your Palm Powered
Handheld, 6th Edition.
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