Archives – April, 2011
Design Around Target Markets, Not Search Engines
You should make your website interesting to your target markets, and search engine friendly. But your visitors’ ability to navigate your site easily is more important than search engine friendliness. If you create a content rich, search engine friendly web site that people can’t get a clear sense of how to navigate within a few seconds of visiting it, you risk losing them just as much as if you’re website was content barren and boring.
Earlier I talked about what your real estate website shouldn’t be. This is as just as important as what it should be. Here are a few more tips on what to avoid with your real estate website: (more…)
April 29, 2011
Website Content And Strategies You Should Avoid
Your real estate website is your face on the internet. Prospects judge your site very quickly (as do search engines), so it’s just as important to have the right ingredients as avoiding the wrong ingredients. So make sure your website doesn’t the following blemishes:
The Me-Me-Me Website
When people visit your website, they’re mainly looking for listings (especially pictures of listings) and secondarily any helpful info you can provide for helping them find their dream home. So don’t bog your site down with info about “you”. All you really need is an About Me page giving a brief description of you: mainly your professional background and a few tidbits about you personally. Remember: your site (and your whole approach to being a real estate professional) should be about your prospects’ and clients’ interests, not yours. One of the best ways of meeting their information needs is having lots of info on your farm areas. Wikipedia is a great place for neighborhood specific information. Another source is your local library, especially for historical information. Try to find ready made content on your farm areas your competition is unlikely to use. Search engines love original content, and the more of it you have on your website for your farm areas, the higher search engines will rank you for people looking for real estate in those areas. (more…)
April 27, 2011
Real Estate Forms
Some people want to see the various real estate legal contracts well before talking to any real estate professionals. So why not offer all the forms you typically use on your website. Here are some forms one real estate professional offers for download:
- Agreement of Purchase and Sale
- Agreement of Purchase and Sale Condominium
- Buyer Representation Agreement
- Buyer Customer Service Agreement
- Confirmation of Cooperation and Representation
- Listing Agreement – Authority to Offer for Sale
- Seller Customer Service Agreement
Walkscore
Many people living in downtown core areas of large cities can’t afford a car or don’t want to own one. They may be elderly or disabled or can’t drive for other reasons. Consequently, the proximity to their home of things like grocery stores and schools are very important to these people. The website Walkscore helps people rate the “walkability” of a given address. In other words, it looks at the total number of resources in the immediate area. The more there is available, the higher the “walkability” rating. They just enter the address and Walkscore gives them a rating as follows: (more…)
April 25, 2011
How To Lists
How to go about buying or selling real estate can be mystifying to many people, especially first time buyers. So you can help make different parts of the home buying process as easy as possible for your website visitors by providing step by step instructional lists. One creative real estate professional put a 10 step list of instructions first time home buyers can follow step by step for the entire process of home buying. You could also have step-by-step lists for things like getting a mortgage, how to choose a pre-construction condo, or how to prepare your outdoor pool for winter. Your lists don’t even have to be real estate related. Just make sure they’re somehow relevant to the types of people in your farm neighborhood. Be creative!
“Top” Lists
one innovative real estate professional has a series of lists on their website such as “10 Best Reasons To Move” and “Top 8 Mistakes Sellers Make”. This is yet another way of taking your experience in real estate and distilling it down to a compelling article. Another reason to have these “top” lists is search engines love this sort of content. (more…)
April 22, 2011
Google AdSense Ads
Ever notice those short classified ads by Google on many websites? Google can deliver unobtrusive ads whose offerings match the content of your website. Google will pay you for every person who clicks the ad. You should do this especially if your website is Search Engine Optimized and gets lots of traffic. These ads can turn into a nice source of passive income.
Google Maps
This is a great way of showcasing your sold listings. You select the geographic area you want shown in the map and then input the addresses of the sold listings to Google. Visitors will then see a small balloon with a letter at each property location on the map. Visitors can then look up the letter in the map’s legend and go to the full listing. You can include current listings in this map. You can also colour code the marker balloons for easier reference. For instance, you could make all pink balloons refer to condos, green balloons refer to houses and so forth.
Open House listings
Some real estate associations and companies allow their members to post their open house dates on their sites. So it’s a definite asset for your site to provide links to this information or (better yet) display this information right on your site. Ideally, people should be able to search by city or zone to find properties. It’s a great way of getting new buyers. (more…)
April 20, 2011
For investors, you could include the following questions and answers in your FAQ:
“How do I go about finding a suitable investment property in Ontario?”
“How does the housing market operate in respect to the economy and in particular the business cycle?”
“What happens with a Power Of Sale (IE foreclosure) property if I require vacant possession, yet the home has a tenant with a lease?”
“What are some of the considerations with basement apartments and accessory dwelling units?”
“Where can I find property management services for my investment property?”
“How do property tax auctions work?”
(more…)
April 18, 2011
Pop-Ups
Most pop-up ads nowadays get suppressed by our web browser. Since we don’t see them much anymore, they’re not as annoying as they once were. One creative Mississauga sales rep’s site occasionally uses a pop up window to advertise the benefits of joining his mailing list. It’s a way of building your mailing list that’s not overly obtrusive and very hard to ignore.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
When people can’t find the information they want quickly they’ll tend to move on to other real estate websites. So having a FAQ on your website is a great way for your visitors to get quick answers to the many of their questions without searching all over your site. With a FAQ you can group questions according to the type of prospect (eg. First Time Buyer, Investor) or subject area (eg. mortgages). One enterprising sales rep has an extensive FAQ section with questions many home buyers and seller have asked him such as: (more…)
April 15, 2011
Bargain Hunters Section
Some people are by nature bargain hunters when doing home searches, and this is particularly true of many investors who are trying to maximize ROI on their investments. One creative Mississauga sales rep has a section geared towards these people. It features detailed information on buying Power Of Sales (Ontario’s terminology for foreclosure), Bank Sales and Tax Sales. The pages on these types of properties frequently ask people to sign up for his mailing list to receive updates on new listings. One thing I noticed with top achieving reps is they ask people to sign up for their mailing list in many areas of your website. The more you ask, the more likely they’ll sign up.
Hot Spots
Having a neighborhood directory of shops is helpful, but having picks of the areas hot spots is even better. When people know what the best spots in an area are before moving there they can visit them themselves and see if these are the kinds of places they’d want to hang out with with friends and family. If they aren’t, this might be a decisive factor for them in looking at other neighborhoods. (more…)
April 13, 2011
Properties Wanted
A real estate website need not be all about showcasing your listings. One innovative sales rep has a section where they put details about the specific types of properties their current buyers and regular investor clients are looking for. They include city, neighborhood, type of house, # of bedrooms, etc. along with price range. This sales rep has a form where buyers can submit what they’re looking for, and it gets posted here.
Twitter
One top achieving Toronto rep has his Twitter postings relayed to his website’s home page. He posts updates on what he’s doing, where he’s traveling, projects he’s involved in, thoughts on his mind about real estate, and so forth. As with Activity Reports given to your sellers, Twitter postings are a great way of showing people how active you are. (more…)
April 11, 2011
Why? If you buy for $243284.74 (the maximum you would qualify for) you will pay down your mortgage of $213284.74 by $27612.02 over 5 year(s) with your Principal and Interest payments of $1121.92 per month, plus your property will increase in value by $67215.09 for a total investment growth of $94827.11.
This total is greater than your total investment growth from renting, which is approximately $9419.55 after 5 year(s). This was calculated by growing the monthly savings from renting ($200.00) plus your current downpayment of $30000.00 at a standard after-tax rate of 4% per annum.”
A short, punchy analysis like this can obviously put in perspective for renters how beneficial it is to buy a home sooner rather than later. (more…)
April 8, 2011
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