Online Real Estate Technology

The content that consumers look for in your property listings is constantly changing and more often today is being driven by what market forces are at play. For instance in the new NAR 2008 Home Buyers survey, a very important consideration is the suburb and the properties location to the buyers workplace. This is being driven by the higher price of fuel, yet how many real estate agents reflect these social changes when writing copy for the net? 

Do you change your copy content to match the market? Well, after conducting some real estate office audits this week on the Sunshine Coast, the response to that question from me would be no! So lets look at what should be included as part of your on line copy to maximise the response from buyers to your listing. 

Suburb choice is now very important in the selection of a home, what schools are in the area, how far is the local shopping centre or local transport, what is the street appeal of the suburb and the list goes on.

I’ve just recieved the October 2008 PRD Nationwide consumer research on this and have included the results for you below:  

What are the features you would find most important when deciding to purchase a unit or apartment?

Whilst this is aimed at the unit/apartment buyer, location of schools, cafes and shops is very high on the priority list and I don’t believe this is very different from those priorities of the home buyer.  

57% of people who will click on your listing during the search process will be female, so write your listing with the demographic and gender in mind. These people are in research mode and will be researching properties and suburbs to see what information they can find about lifestyle conditions in the area, as well as practical considerations such as travel time etc. Use www.walkscore.com to help generate local area information, walkscore will tell you the distance to local amenities such as parks, shopping centres, local transport etc.  Cut and paste the images of the maps in your photo selection to indicate the local area and provide this under “your local expert” tag.

The best layout of your listing, should be as follows:

Headline – Sells the lifestyle and gets attention so make it strong

Property Information – This is the nuts & bolts of the property.

Suburb and lifestyle Expectation – This is the what’s in it for “me” section and why i should buy here, more importantly, this is the part that provides the emotion and expectation of what the area provides, so use this section wisely.      

Call To Action - This is where you market yourself, don’t leave this out, this is where you ask for the order or the lead, and way too many times agents leave this off. In the recent CAR home buyers survey, 45% of consumers said that agent contact information was a very important part of the information provided to them on Internet listings.

Real Estate agents should market themselves as the local experts in the area, but make sure you are what you say you are. 

Now one word of warning with all of this, don’t go and write War & Peace, make sure you provide succinct information that is relevant to the search and selection process. If you add too much waffle, the consumer will close you down, make it relevant information that will assist them in making the decision to go to the next step and that is to contact you. 

I’ll cover the new NAR 2008 Home Buyers Survey in more detail for you in the next few days.