Buyer Search Info

Posted on Friday, February 5th, 2010 and is filed under Real Estate Info, Real Estate News

I was looking through the 2009 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers research report published by the National Association of Realtors, and I thought I would share some interesting information.

1. What website features buyers value. 97% of buyers thought photos and detailed property information were helpful (not sure what the other 3% are thinking here…?).   89% thought virtual tours were helpful.  I would like to think if they all saw a FloorPlanOnline tour, that number would be close to 100%!   I would also like to point out that other companies have done research around online content, and several studies have indicated that Photos score the highest in terms of essential content and floor plans score #2!  So, if your listing does not have its Floor Plan Online….it should.

2. More and more Buyers are Online to search. The first step taken by far in the home buying process was go online to look for properties for sale – 36% listed this as the first step taken.  This was double the next highest action, which was contact a real estate agent (18%).

In addition, 90% of all buyers used the Internet to search, while 93% of first time buyers used the Internet. Again more than any other source.  In the key buying group of 25 to 44 year olds, 96% of the respondents used the Internet to search.

3. Websites used in the Home Search process. The most used site by far was the multiple listing service (MLS) website.  This could be a factor that agents typically email listing info to their buyers, so it is pushed to them.  Some MLSs have their own consumer oriented search site…but I know some do not.  The total list of websites used by Buyers (percentages are for All Buyers surveyed):

• MLS – 60%
• Real Estate Company website – 46%
• Realtor.com – 46%
• Real estate agent website – 45%
• Other websites with real estate listings (Trulia, Zillow, etc) – 30%
• For Sale by Owner websites – 17%
• Newspaper website – 9%
• Real Estate Magazine website – 4%
• Social media websites (Facebook, MySpace, etc) – 1%
• YouTube – <1%

It is interesting to note that the types of sites used by different age brackets did not differ much at all. The top site for all groups was the MLS, followed by the company site and Realtor.com.  Also, there is a lot of hype about social media and YouTube…but this is not necessarily translating into buyers using these sites for searching.   For example, between the age groups of 18 to 24 and 25 to 44, only 1% said they used social media websites.  The 45 and over crowd said less than 1%.  Surprisingly, 2% over 65 said they used YouTube, while all the other age groups responded with less than 1%.  Now, this does not mean there is no value to social media or YouTube…these outlets just need to be used in the right way and for the right reason.  I also think there is some search engine benefit to posting content on these sites.  Note…we will address the YouTube video posting issue in 2010.

4. The Internet is getting results. 36% of respondents FIRST found the home they purchased via the Internet search.  This was the same as through a real estate agent, and up from 32% last year.  No other source was higher. Print newspaper was down to 2% now….ouch.  Also, 77% of buyers drove by or viewed a home after finding it online, while 61% walked through the home.  Another interesting stat – 28% found the agent they used to buy the home online.  There was also a high correlation in people that used the Internet to search and those that used an agent to buy – 79% used an agent to buy.

Implications – I think  what all of these stats boils down to is YOU need to be online and you need to have the best online content for your listings, because chances are, if you make an impression online, you are going to get a buyer to call you, drive by or tour your listing.  The first step is getting the right content. People want to see photos and floor plans.  All the other fancy stuff like spinning 360s, deep zoom, property videos with voice over has actually scored lower on the desirability scale.  In some cases, like voice over and music playing when you first open a tour scores negative.  People want to see the essentials quickly and easily.

The second step is get this content distributed to the KEY places people search. Your virtual tours need to be linked to your MLS (use the unbranded link – in many markets we do this for you automatically), on Realtor.com (we link the tour for you automatically….and it is FREE if you are a Realtor.com Showcase member), your company website and your website/blog.  This will get you 95% or more there. You can then use our tools to link the tour to your Facebook site, Twitter, and more.  Realtor.com has a nice Facebook widget to add your listings to your Facebook profile.  We also are posting listings to Google Base now.  We will be working to add more sites like Zillow, Trulia, Craigslist, etc. in  the coming months (however you can do this now manually).

In addition, talk to your company IT people about posting the company tours to Zillow, Trulia and others.  As part of this make sure your virtual tour links come through with the data feed. Most if not all of these sites can include the virtual tour link…but the company needs to send it along.  As I stated in a previous post, your company should really be posting tours to these other websites….There is a hierarchy Zillow and others use, and companies like us are the last on the list.  So if we link a tour to Zillow, for example, and your company pushes the listing there, it will push our link off…and if the company info does not include the tour link, your tour will not get exposure on Zillow. So, push your company to post listings to these other website portals and make sure the virtual tour links are included. You paid good money for the content and you deserve the most exposure!

All for now…time for the weekend.  Thanks for reading

-Kris Cone

As always, please feel free to contact me.

Corporate & Sub Account Support

Posted on Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 and is filed under Real Estate Info, Real Estate News, Tour Updates

I have talked to a lot of customers recently about situations where they have multiple accounts and need access to those account. So I wanted to let you know we support what we call a Corporate/Sub Account structure. Normally, when you register with us, you create an individual account. However, you can create a corporate account, and then once you have a corporate account, you can create sub accounts (this is done in the corporate account under the Manage Sub Accounts on the right when you are logged in), or with the corporate account info, an agent can create a sub account underneath your corporate account. All they need is the Company customer ID and the company password. The option to register as a sub account is located on our registration page, or click here.

With the Corporate/Sub account structure, you can have one person manage the office tours, for example, but each agent can get access into their own account.  The corporate account sees all tours for each sub account.  You can also place tour orders out of the corporate account for any sub-account.  Just select the drop-down on page 2 as you are placing an order.   This account structure is quite handy for companies that do some of the work for agents.

We can also set things up so the corporate account pays for all sub account tours.  Please call us at 866-810-3816, option 3 if you would like to set up a corporate/sub account structure or you can always send us an email.  Just use the form below.

-Cheers,

Kris Cone

New Listing Tools Posted

Posted on Monday, February 22nd, 2010 and is filed under Listing Tools, What's New

We are pleased to announce the addition of two great listing tools for you to use under the Tools menu option from our main website.  We have added 14 different company branded Listing Presentation Templates as well as a generic presentation you can use to customize for your own brand if we do not have it listed.  Just make the applicable edits to the different pages and save.  We provide both a PowerPoint and Google Docs version.  You can either print the materials out, or save to your computer and take your laptop with your and use as a tool to showcase how you will use FloorPlanOnline to market the seller’s home! you can also embed the Google doc version right into your website, just like below…so you can provide some key information to users browsing your site.

In addition, we added two printable one-page handouts on FloorPlanOnline under Tools>Marketing Downloads.  One is for the Seller that you can leave as a handout and the other is something you can print out and hang up at your office.

Agents that have incorporated the FloorPlanOnline Marketing System into their listing presentations often get the listing – EVERY TIME!  It can help demonstrate to the Seller that you know how to market a home, and in the most important place – ONLINE.  After all, 96% of buyers in the key buying group use the Internet to search for homes.  Don’t let your seller’s home be left out!

If you do not see a version for you company, just let us know and we can try to customize something for you.  Just use the form below or on the Listing Presentation Template page.

The next crisis: Commercial real estate

Posted on Thursday, February 11th, 2010 and is filed under Real Estate News

Just in….A little scary, and Halloween is still so far away…

WASHINGTON (CNNMoney.com) — A congressional watchdog panel warned on Thursday that mounting commercial real estate losses could endanger the banking system and thwart economic recovery.

A total of $1.4 trillion in commercial real estate loans will require refinancing in the next four years, the Congressional Oversight Panel said in a report. More than half of those loans are underwater, written for properties whose value has dropped like a rock.

Click here to read the full article.

-Kris Cone

Mobile Handset Marketshare

Posted on Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 and is filed under Real Estate Info

The numbers are in and the iPhone and Android OS provided by Google are increasing their market share at the expense of companies like Motorola and RIM.   I hear the iPhone will soon have an MLS key application…then it will be the killer real estate agent tool!

According to comScore, of the 234 million cell-phone users over age 13 in the U.S. in the fourth quarter, Motorola-manufactured hardware dominated the market of all mobile users.  Among smartphone operating systems, Research In Motion (“RIM”) had the largest smartphone market share at 41.6 percent. But the real competition heating up is between Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android system, which both had slight gains. The iPhone now sits at 25.3 percent of the smartphone market share.  Android increased to 5.2 percent in December, although its share was still the lowest.

Click here to read more of the article.

The Stevens Estate

Posted on Tuesday, February 9th, 2010 and is filed under Real Estate Info, Real Estate News

Check out the Stevens Estate, a $16+ million listing in New Jersey.  This property was featured on a metro NYC NBC station over the past weekend.  The property is listed by Erica Levey of Weichert Capital Properties.

www.TheStevensEstate.com

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