Online Real Estate Technology

So who made up the rule that your on line property listings can’t be updated to reflect what is happening in the community? No one did, it’s just one of those things that most agents never think of. Lets use the recent rise in fuel prices, internet search volumes for real estate, individual suburbs searches and more importantly property views increased during the period of high petrol prices, why? because a great number of consumers decided to do more searching at home, so how many agents reflected this in their listings, how many included the words,”Not travelling as much, don’t worry we’ll come to you” or enticed their property readers to “attend the open for inspection at home, anytime at your convenience”.

Constantly using the internet to update your listings to reflect what is happening in the local community, is to me, a very effective way of making the net work better for you. You are tapping into what affects people in real life. In the cluttered market we have today with lots of stock available, why not take the approach to use the strength of the medium, it’s ability to instantly update the consumer with new and relevant information. You’ll stand out from the crowd and consumers searching in your suburb will pick up on this very quickly, why? because one of the most common complaints about property listings is outdated information, so turn the tables!! 

Another issue to think about, I often see properties being targeted to a very wide target market and one that has not been properly defined, by doing this, you actually miss the very people you are trying to attract.

An example of this, which I encountered yesterday in an office, was a property being marketed to both a property investor and a first home buyer. Great idea except, to me, these conflict? An Investor will be looking for something totally different in that home than a first home buyer. The investor looks for rental return, good existing tenants and potential capital growth, whilst a first home buyer looks for a “home” to live in.

The agent trying to market this property would be better to properly define their target and write the copy to attract that targeted buyer, not by trying to be everything to everybody. There is also nothing wrong with marketing this listing at the first home buyer for 2 weeks and then changing the target and copy, to market to the Investor. What you achieve here is constantly updated properties that are well targeted and well defined.   

There is nothing wrong in this at all, In fact it may just help you stand out in a cluttered market and you will start to use the medium more effectively. It will also improve your copywriting skills and you’ll start to rotate your properties so that they don;t get stale. Remember, the longer they stay online, the worse they will perform, so update your target market regularly and update the property to reflect the changes in the community. Tap into issues like interest rate cuts etc. It’s all about cut through in a crowded market and the entrepreneur will be the winner.

This blog post available as a podcast: www.mikeandrew.podomatic.com/Updating Your Listings Body Copy to Reflect the Current Market

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.

I’ve just completed a technology presentation on Hayman Island to members of the north Qld zone of L J Hooker and what a great bunch of people they all are. I had a lot of fun with them yesterday and during the follow up conversations with the team, the question of what constitutes a good listing on the net was asked of me.

I decided to revisit some research conducted by Yahoo some months ago about the changing nature of on line real estate search habits. An interesting point raised by Yahoo is that the consumer is now searching through the search engines and mainstream portals to delete properties from the search, not include them. In the early days, consumers would search the web to find properties, now it appears the pattern has changed.

So what can you do to make sure that you and your properties are not deleted from the search. First thing, is to make sure all your listings on the net are complete and that you include full and relevant descriptions. Include as many photos, virtual tours and better still video on your listing and change them regularly. Remember,frequently updated information is King. Heres the list of the 7 Sins of Listing Management below for you.

1. No Indication of Price – 92% of on line property searchers recently surveyed said they would not look at a property without a price.

2. No Photos or insufficient number – 72% want more than 5 photos, include as many as possible including virtual tours and video and floor plans.

3. No Street Address – 74% of property searchers indicated an address was extremely important and said they drove past the property before contacting the agent.

4. Tacky Headlines – Real Estate based headlines such as “ Will sell fast so you must hurry”, or “Be Quick” etc do not work, and remember the older the listing the more irrelevant the headline becomes.

5. Short Descriptions with Useless Information – Create a consistent approach within your office to providing the essential content that property seekers want. Make sure all relevant information including all features and benefits as well as your call to action and suburb information is included. Remember, you are the suburb expert.

6. Layout of your Listing – Using bullets points to highlight features and benefits makes your listing more reader friendly and make sure you don’t use long sentences, break them up into smaller paragraphs to make your listing easier to read.

7. Out of Date Information – Make sure your listing is up to date, remember consumers do not like seeing old or outdated information, make sure you have the latest available information on the property. It is you and your brand that will suffer if you don’t provide the best information possible.

If you find this helpful, I’ll add some copywriting for the web tips in a later post, so as always, let me know if you find this post helpful. Remember, always check your spelling before uploading!!!!

Good Luck

Mike

As part of my training for agents I often talk about the quailty of photos on listings that are published. Just thought I would share some of the more interesting ones with you on this post. These are from the US and do demonstrate just how bad photos can be.

Just the thing to Impress your new tenant

All That's Missing is You

The Cone of Silence

I’ll add more of these over the next few posts and add some of the Australian examples as well.

If you would like to know more about how to resize your photos for the major portals and what is the ideal resolution then please ask.