Marketing a listing on the web continues to become more involved as new listing systems are debuted and begin competing for home buyers’ eyes. The latest to debut is the “Point 2 NLS“, or national listing service. Point2 is company that specializes in websites for real estate agents. The company offers a free standard website for agents and listings entered on the Point2 sites are shared across a number of other home search sites.
My brokerage firm, Keller Williams Realty, recently debuted the new “KWLS” or Keller Williams Listing Service for Keller Williams agents. KW plans to use this listing data in partnering with other third party sites to provide maximum web exposure for our listings. The common mission with both of these services is to “put control back in the hands of real estate professionals”.
Blame it on the MLSs. They have the data but refuse to let it freely wander the web. You can only protect the data so much. Now that agents and homeowners can list properties all over the web, the value of the MLSs is in a freefall.
Add these new listing databases to Google Base, Trulia, Zillow, Yahoo! Classifieds, Oodle, Craig’s List, etc., and now listing a property is a lot more involved than a 1/2 hour or so on the MLS. Need to make a price change? Make sure you visit all of your listing sites to make the changes.
Since the web is so fragmented at this point in time and buyers eyes are on many different sites, we have to make the effort to market listings wherever we can. Maximum exposure is key. The last thing we want our clients asking us is “why can’t I find my listing on…..?”
But as the cream rises to the top and certain sites begin to grab and keep the majority of home search traffic, we may only have to enter listing data in one database once again.
So the question is, who’ll win the race to be the site to search for homes? My bet is Google. As Joel Burslem at The Future of Real Estate Marketing mentions, Google is targeting real estate professionals with a new page documenting its suite of services. Google is already claiming that it “has more real estate searches than all real estate specific web sites.”
But in the meantime, we as Realtors should be prepared to spend some additional time entering and maintaining our listings on the web. Get used to it.
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