The real estate consumer has a dizzying array of websites that provide them with access to real estate listings. There are numerous third party websites like Zillow and Trulia as well as national real estate franchise sites and local real estate company websites. Consumers likely assume that all of these sites provide updated, accurate and complete information. Unfortunately this isn’t the case.

If you missed the begining of this series, click here:

• The Property Search Delta - Part I
• The Property Search Delta - Part II

RE/MAX – linking to a local RE/MAX broker

Search on Grand Island, NY

When a consumer searches on the RE/MAX franchisor site for a listing on Grand Island, NY, the system takes the consumer to a totally different listing experience. This is a result of the local region or broker being on a different web platform. While the link to the property takes the user to the correct property detail, the consumer is forced to experience a totally different user interface from the site they started their search on. Looking at the options on the screen below we can see many nice features from saving the search to requesting an appointment; however, the interface is different, which is not ideal for the consumer.

Click Here

Same RE/MAX Listing Linked Through Trulia

If we do a search on Trulia for the same listing, we find it, but if we click on the Broker Link we are taken to a totally different listing experience. Rather than connect back to the broker/agent site, the link takes the consumer to a ListHub landing page with some agent branding but very little broker branding and, again, a totally different consumer experience.

Click Here

Edina Realty (Edinarealty.com)

Edina Realty is a HomeServices of America, Inc., company and Berkshire Hathaway affiliate. Edina Realty is one of the nation's largest full-service real estate companies with REALTORS® serving the Midwest from Fargo, North Dakota, throughout the Twin Cities, Southern and Northern Minnesota and into Western Wisconsin.

Quick Search

The Edina search site provides a quick and easy search on their homepage as shown below.

Click Here

When you get your search results you can still further define it through search fields on the left-hand side of the page, as seen below. In our search we found 41 properties.

Listing Display

From this screen you can go to details, save the property, map it, schedule email updates or request more information from an agent. You also have an option of three views: a list, gallery or map.

Full Listing Display

The Edina full listing display is one of the richer displays we reviewed. Features include:

• Request more info
• Schedule a showing
• Save the property
• View saved
• Map/directions
• Brochure print
• Email property
• Send to Mobile
• Send to Facebook, etc.
• Nearby properties
• Neighborhood info
• Mortgage info – payments
• Walk Score
• Photo viewer – slide show
• Rooftop Geocoding
• Parcel Lines on Map

Edinarealty.com has done a great job of spicing up their site with nice features such as:

• Neighborhood information on home value
• Appreciation
• Vacancies
• Average rental cost
• % homes rented
• % homes owned
• Median age
• Home use

There is also a great little module that shows the “Walk Score” index for popular locations that are near to the property being looked at.

Windermere.com

Windermere Real Estate is a leading residential real estate network in the West with more than 300 offices and 8,000 associates serving neighborhoods in Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Wyoming, Washington and British Columbia. Windermere has been consistently ranked as the largest regional real estate brand in the western United States by REAL Trends, a primary source of Internet data. According to their website, the Windermere’s website (www.windermere.com) receives over two million unique visits per month.

Quick Search

The Windermere quick search allows you to put an address in, a price range or an actual MLS number. You can also decide right in the beginning whether you want to see results in a list format or on a map.

If you select on the “more options” control it opens up this additional information.

Expanded Search

You can limit your search by property type and a few other features like square footage. You can also look for Open House information from this screen.

The Windermere search came back with 820 matching listings. When we did the same search with Coldwell Banker Bain we only found 500. This may be due to a difference in area designations or other factors, but it illustrates once again the difficulties that consumers have in being confident they are finding accurate listing counts on these different sites.

Search Results

When you first click on a listing and ask for detail it takes you to a more detailed version next to the list. This is a nice feature that lets you browse through the list seeing details for each listing you click on without leaving the page altogether.

• The Windermere results page has a nice list feature that lets you view details without losing the list. The consumer can easily browse through the properties by clicking on any listing. If the consumer wants full details, then they select “more details.”
• Listings can be sent.
• Listings can be mapped.
• Listings can be saved as clippings.
• Flyers can be viewed and printed.

Full Listing Detail

Below is the full listing detail page.

• Property details
• Photo display
• Price history
• Find an agent
• Map including: Road, Birdseye, Aerial, Labels
• Walking distance locations

Coldwellbanker.com - - http://Coldwellbanker.com

Coldwell Banker Real Estate, LLC, is a member of the Realogy Company. Since 1906 the Coldwell Banker® organization has been a provider of full-service residential and commercial real estate. Coldwell Banker is the oldest national real estate brand in the United States and today has a network of more than 98,000 agents working in more than 3,600 offices in 49 countries and territories.

Quick Search

The Coldwell Banker homepage presents a simple and easy to use search screen.

If desired, the user can also go to additional search options from this screen.

Search Results

We did our search with Coldwell Banker in the Seattle, WA, area for single family homes in the $300,000 to $400,000 range. Our search produced 94 homes.

Click Here.

• Homes can be viewed from the list in full detail.
• Home can be mapped.
• Photos can be viewed.
• Listings can be saved.
• Listings can be shared via social network sites.
• Listings can be rated.
• Consumers can also link to the local broker site if they wish.

Full Listing Detail

The detail page on the above listing has very scant information compared to listings that are created from full IDX data.

• Not full IDX data – limited data fields on listing
• Photo display
• Agent information
• Nearby places of interest
• Rapid response button
• Options to: Rate, Save, Print, Share with social network sites, Map
• Contact

It is interesting to note that there is no link to follow to go to the “local Coldwell Banker office” where they could see complete IDX info.

Coldwell Banker – SEAL/BAIN

This is a Coldwell Banker website at the broker level in Seattle, WA.

Click Here.

There is a link to the local Coldwell Banker website on the franchise site but it is not that easy to find. It is highlighted in green on the next screen. When you do link you are able to see all of the IDX listings available through the MLS; however, the display is still in the limited format of listings manually entered on the franchise website, not the full listing detail you see if you go directly to the broker website.

Link to the Local Site

Click Here.

The following listing is a Windermere IDX listing, but unlike the full detail you would see if you went directly to the Coldwell Banker SEAL/BAIN website search, this shows only the limited information available on the Coldwell Banker franchise site. The link to the Coldwell Banker SEAL/BAIN site is noted in the green highlighted area above.

Coldwell Banker SEAL/BAIN - Full Listing Detail

Click Here.

@properties.com - - http://www.atproperties.com

@properties was established in 2000, and in less than a decade grew from a four-person boutique brokerage firm to more than 900 licensed agents in seven office locations producing approximately $2 billion in annual sales volume.  

In addition to Residential Brokerage and Development Marketing, @properties has full-service divisions for Commercial Brokerage; Residential and Commercial Property Management; Relocation; and Foreclosures, Short Sales and Institutional Services.

In 2006, @properties ranked number 341 on Inc. magazine’s prestigious Inc. 500 list of the fastest-growing private companies in America, and in 2007 it ranked number 5 on Crain’s Chicago Business Fast Fifty list of the fastest-growing companies in Chicago.

Search Screen

The @properties opening search screen is clean and easy to use. A “More Search Options” button is also available on this screen.

More Search Options

If you select “More Search Options” you go to the above screen.

Polygon Map Search

@properties offers an easy to use Polygon Map search feature like edinarealty.com. It was easy to use and provided the ability for users to define the area boundaries around where they want to live. We did notice that some of the properties were not aligned correctly. Rooftop geocoding would help with this.

Click Here

You can draw any shape that you want to define your location search, which can be really helpful given how some areas are defined. The consumer may want part of an area, but without this type of search there may be no other way to limit the properties to the desired area.

@property Gallery View

The @property site is very clean and nicely designed. It does a great job on the property search section. As an example, it allows you to view properties in the Gallery View, as shown below, or in a List View or on a map.

@property List View

• When you get your search results in the list format you get a brief description with a map view on the right.
• You can save any search.
• You can easily set up email alerts.
• There is a nice photo viewer and slide show.
• You can schedule a viewing directly from the short view.
• You can make a property a favorite.
• You can set up a status alert for a property.
• You can send the listing to social network sites.

@property Map View

The large Map View presents the property list below. School information is available on the right. A “compare” option at the bottom is a bit hard to find but lets the user see a vertical display of up to four properties in a traditional CMA layout.

• At the bottom you have options to save, make favorites and compare properties.
• You have the same options on the listing display to:
• View details
• Schedule viewing
• Add to favorites
• Save
• Share to social networking
• Set up a status alert
• See photos, slide show
• You can click to see area’s school ratings.

@properties Market Report

The @properties Market Report is a great feature that provides excellent market information on pricing and trends. While not a real CMA, it does provide a nice, easy to understand snapshot of numbers like the average price, days on market and sale price to list price percentage. While the report is not based on a specific property, which would be ideal, it does let you specify property type, bedrooms and baths and the neighborhood. Ideally we would like to be able to run this for a specific property automatically, but the results are very good regardless. This report is accessible from the full listing detail or from the top menu, and updates are also available via automatic emails. We did try some areas that did not show any information available.

@property Neighborhood Information Report

The Neighborhood Information Report is the type of information that should be on every broker website on the Internet. This simple report uses a well-worded description along with a map representation to provide background on your area of choice. In the example below they are referencing the Lake Bluff area, and on the right-hand side they include area specific news as an extra. We also like the fact that they provide access to school information on multiple pages so you don’t have to search around for it if you didn’t click on it the first time. Unfortunately we did not find a link to this neighborhood information on the Property Detail page or on the Market Report page. You can go to the Market Report page via a button but not vice versa. It would seem to make sense that all the information contained on the right for the Market Report should also be on this page and that you could go back and forth to both reports, but for some reason they have isolated the neighborhood reports.

Conclusion

The online landscape for property search is constantly evolving. In order for brokers, agents and franchises to compete for consumer interest, they need to keep their heads up and look carefully at their strategy for remaining relevant online.

The biggest threat to broker and franchise websites today are third party websites like Trulia and Zillow. Today they offer consumers the most engaging consumer experience around a depth of property information. Brokers and franchisors recognized this unique online marketing talent early, and began to provide their listing content as a form of advertising to generate leads for agents. Today the leads have slowed, as these sites have become destination sites for consumers. Consumers use them as a launch pad for property search and keep returning because of the great tools and depth of information that consistently outshines even the best broker and franchise websites.

WAV Group has been consistently concerned about data quality on third party websites. They have great sites, but generally poor data quality. Our dilemma is that the consumer believes the quality is the same as a broker site; after all, the listings have the broker’s name on them. Poor data quality misrepresents the seller and reflects poorly on the broker. Moreover, it begins a virus that diminishes the reputation of real estate professionals. Consider the effect when a consumer contacts an agent or broker to get information about a listing only to learn that there is a new price or that the listing has been sold.

Perhaps the most radical opportunity for franchises and brokers to compete would be to pull down their listings. As an alternative, a more realistically productive measure would be to make some strategic goals for how to reduce the property search delta between third party sites and broker and franchise sites.

Find a single source vendor who can normalize data from multiple MLSs, sold data, tax data, market data, neighborhood data and lifestyle data into one, easy to use listing detail page. This vendor should manage your listing syndication as a component to the service to insure that consumers referred from third party websites are taken directly to your listing which is presented in a superior way. Only syndicate teaser content to third party websites to lean the delta back in the direction of the broker franchise site as the richest source of lisitng information.

WAV Group provides professional consulting services to the Real Estate industry. Our firm helps Multiple Listing Services, associations, real estate firms, franchise organizations and technology vendors in the US, Canada and Europe reach their business goals. Whether it is a vendor selection and implementation for a real estate association, assisting a technology vendor develop a better user interface for their product or conducting research to determine member or client issues, WAV Group always begins with a clear understanding of the needs and objectives of the customer as well as the end user.  Our team can help you outline a new strategic direction for growth, product or service improvement. We can help you better understand your member and clients needs by proven research methodology. We can assist you to make wise technology decision and stay with you and drive implementation. In short, we work with your organization to help you successfully reach your specific business objectives!

Published: September 24, 2010

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