Yes. It's true, we let the bird go. It was time. RealBird flies free now.

We are glad to announce that the RealBird Listing Publisher service is now completely free for real estate agents and brokers.

The RealBird Listing Publisher is an advanced on-line listing marketing service for creating listing presentations (aka virtual tours) and for listing distribution to 3rd party websites such as Craigslist, Trulia, Kijiji, Google Base etc. for maximum exposure. You can create unlimited single property websites with unlimited, large-size photos, slide-shows, videos, unlimited design themes, widgets and much more. To read about the features and to register please visit http://www.RealBird.com

Even though the service is now free, I feel, I have to provide a quick value proposition below:

Your job as a listing agent - at the core business level - is to get the most money for your seller's listing in the shortest possible time-frame while avoiding legal and financial and psychological pit-holes. As a sales professional, you have to set the price by knowing the local market conditions (CMA), find the buyer, negotiate the deal and close. Using online listing marketing technologies can significantly help you in your ability of increasing your advertising reach, therefore helping you to reduce the time required to find qualified buyers (the Find process).

RealBird Listing Publisher supports the 3Ps of online real estate listing marketing: Presentation, Promotion and Pre-qualification.

Presentation:

Remember IPIX? One of the breakthrough real estate technologies of the mid-90s was the panorama virtual tour. Even today, many use the word virtual tour as a synonym for panorama virtual tour, you know, the one, which enables viewer to look around in the room by panning and zooming, when in fact, any technologies or media which help presenting the property for remote users virtually are considered to be virtual tours. All these technologies serve the same purpose: by showing your property for remote users, you increase the input volume of your sales pipeline. There are only so many visitors you can handle during open homes, in person. Or they may not be able to attend due to geographic or time constraints. With virtual tours, you can show your property to more prospects, hence increasing your chance of finding the matching buyer quicker. Nowadays, there are plenty of different technologies to create virtual presentations with, and it's no longer only about the technology itself, but the ease of creating such presentations, by using low cost hardware, broadband access and widely available low cost or free technologies. YouTube videos, high-resolution pictures taken with your own low cost digital camera, embeddable slideshows, aerial photos, maps, local points of interests, overlays to name a few. The free RealBird Listing Publisher provides you all the tools you need to create single property websites, mashup 3rd party components (including your existing virtual tour), embed and attach as many media presentations (pictures, video, maps etc.) as you wish. Later in the post I'll give you an estimate how little time it takes to do all that with RealBird.

Pre-qualification: Providing a good online presentation helps you streamline your sales pipeline. While an advanced online listing presentation can help you finding more prospective buyers (increasing the input of your pipeline), it can also help you pre-qualify them. Information about the property and neighborhood can help your pipeline management by automatically filtering "fake" leads and buy educating visitors and therefore helping them make their own decision. At the end of the day, the difference between success and failure may all come down to your ability to manage your time effectively. A detailed virtual presentation can help you with that also.

Promotion: Except for rare cases (e.g. celebrity homes, security concerns etc.) you want to present your property to as many prospective buyers as possible.  You have to give a chance for as many interested parties to take a look, as it is practically possible. Gone are the days, when it is enough to list your property only on the MLS or your local paper. The advancement of Internet technologies, the change in attitude toward data transparency (e.g. IDX data feeds, consumer portals) changed the game once and for all. Part of your value proposition to your seller is that you will market their property with high efficiency. This can, however be an overwhelming and time-consuming service to provide, unless you use a technology which does most of the work for you. RealBird Listing Publisher automatically distributes your listing to major search engines and classified sites (their combined unique visitors are in the millions per month) and provides tools to significantly make it easier for you to post to other very high visibility sites (Craigslist, Kijiji etc.).

We calculated that it only takes an average of 10-15 minutes to get your listing published via RealBird. A typical workflow of creating a single property website and distributing your listings to major portals looks like this:

• Post your listing on RealBird with features, description and neighborhood info - 3-5 minutes
  
• Upload photos - 2-4 minutes
• Optionally adding video (assuming you took one already and edited, shared it already via YouTube, Viddler etc.) - 1 minute
• Automatic distribution to SearchOnMaps.com, Trulia, Edgeio.com, Vast.com, Oodle.com, Google Base, Lycos, Local.com - 0 minute, the system does it automatically
• Manually posting to Craigslist, Kijiji, Backpage using the embed code provided by RealBird - 3 minutes
• Adding mapping, driving directions, school information, real time traffic, local coupons - 0 minute, all included
• Promoting your listings via widgets - 1 time set up on your blog and website; the widgets' content are  automatically updated when you post a new listing
  

That is 13 minutes per listing on an average. The result is great listing presentation and wide-spread distribution of listing information.

Imagine that you can introduce your real estate services on your next listing interview by adding such online listing marketing expertise to your resume. I can't picture a single seller who would not be impressed.

I am very interested to hear your take on this and please check out our new, free service at http://www.RealBird.com

 

-- Zoltan Szendro

RealBird Inc.

Web: http://www.realbird.com

Blog: http://realbird.typepad.com

Real Estate Yellow Pages: http://www.SearchOnMaps.com