Has anyone tried HouseValues.com lead generation system?

Hi Allegra,

I would be skeptical of ANYONE selling leads - especially wanting a "stiff contract" as you call it.  Why on earth would they need a contract and how does it benefit you?

I have a response to some of the pushy ones - I ask them to give me a free trial. I ask for 30 days to see if the leads truly work (I don't get it usually).  I tell them we want to evaluate them first before committing and remind them I never HEARD of them before.  It usually gets rid of them in a nice way.

I also dig deep in Google, looking for blogs and groups that have had experience with that company.  I look for problems or complaints. 

AR is a good place to go, too.  Smart idea.  Good luck.

Art

 

I am completely anti-lead generators.  My theory is that the main thing those folks do is generate $$ for their pockets!!

Never give your money away to a lead company. Spend your money on your website and have the leads come to you directly!

I used them about a year and a half ago. Do what Nancy Reagan says and just say no!  The leads where very bad. 

Allegra, This is a controversial topic.

On the minus side, lead generators really swipe our business so from that viewpoint, it's better to take the same "marketing dollars" and invest them in your own site, in your own SEO etc.

On the plus side, House Values CAN work if you are willing to work the leads a certain way. The trick is to do a POP BY (which most people hate doing). If you cannot establish a personal relationship, it'll be almost impossible to convert the leads, AND a lot of the leads are totally fake, as others have stated.

I had a HV account for 18 months. Yeah, it did pay for itself. But if I'd wante to do pop bys, I'd have had a higher conversion ratio.

But at the end of the day, do you want to brand them or you? For many reasons, I dropped the service and plowed that money back into my own web presence. (I now have about 6 websites).

Best of luck from Silicon Valley,

Now that active rain is here and it is FREE ( Thanks Jonathan for your brilliance!) I would stick with this!

Allegra,

Ask them what their "churn rate" is... Bet they won't tell you. Then, look it up in their SEC filings... You'll find it, and it is very high. They admit - in a document few will see - that they expect a turnover rate for their subscribers up in the 80+% range (it was more than a year ago I last checked...). This number should be low, if they had a service that everyone wanted, right? These are lead pimps, and they are stealing our bait, then fishing upstream from us... Just Say No...

PS - I love your name - perfect for a Realtor!

I received a call today from House Values.com. The caller actually told me they are the only company of its kind to be endorsed by NAR. I must have missed that endorsement. Probably on a letter that got lost in the mail.

I asked him to send an e-mail and I would review the material and we would talk next week. I wanted to see what they do and what they are about. I reviewed the material and it is certainly not for me. I have always avoided all these companies like the plague and will continue to so.

I already did a big pre-paid contract with another company that was not related but I was totally used. I am so much brighter than this normally but I went along with it because I met them at a State Association sponsored Expo and they seemed legitimate. What they do have is the best , brightest and most persistent salesmen to sell you. I learned my lesson the hard way.  We should all be more than aware of a simple rule. If all it takes is money to buy it and you can't eat it or wear it, you probably won't get what you are paying for. Because unlike the subjective feelings of value associated with fashions and foods, concrete results from most of the other things that are being sold to us require concrete results or benefits, they are not subjective. Buying names and e-mail addresses as leads that were captured from unsuspecting people looking around on the Internet are mostly worthless. You can buy your own ads with the search engines and get your own worthless list.

I would recommend that you DO NOT sign anything or agree in some other way to receive anything that is probably worthless.

 

 

Bad experiences by agents in my office. This is a tough business to buy your way to success. Branding yourself like one of the previous responses is the way to go. Work your website is one way to work at it. Active Rain blogs are another. Localism is another 

Just step away from lead aggregators - I wrote a post about these recently - not favorable.

I just got the call. If it hadn't been for Activerain I would probably have tried them.

 Phew. Thanks     

Once you have an engine in place to process transactions from leads, the focus must be on lead generation to fuel the engine!