If your website has an IDX link, do you provide the full property address to Web surfers? If so, you may be acting more like a librarian than a realtor! Do you really believe Web surfers, the potential clients, who have had in many cases no personal, or even email, contact with you, are going to remember where, let alone who, provided them the address when they believe they are standing in front of their 'dream' home? What percent of these people are just going to contact the listing agent whose name appears on the yard sign?
As a listing agent myself, I'd love every agent to show all property addresses on their IDX links! To get real though, let's address a problem that has probably cost you a lot of money, time and aggravation over the years.
I'll preface this by saying that many of the Internet prospects you deal with in your career will likely be good, honest people. However, it seems the inquiries generated through realtor websites cause even the best, most honest, potential clients, to, either intentionally or unintentionally, waste your time.
As a professional in this industry, your time is the one thing you can't afford to waste. If you run out of money, you can always make more. If you run out of time, all the money in the world won't help you.
So there is a good argument to be made for the notion that time is much more valuable than money.
The impersonal nature of the Internet and 'instant response' culture promoted by it can be detrimental to efficient agent time management.
If you have a popular website, you will notice that a large percent of the inquires requesting property availability, neighborhood/school facts and recent sales data, never contact by phone, or reply back to your emails after you have sent them their requested information.
Actually, with popular sites these time wasters can be a very serous problem. You'll notice I said 'can be' in the preceding sentence. If you follow my suggestions below, the occurrence of this happening through your site will be drastically reduced or eliminated entirely.
Naturally, there will be many who will take exception to my ideas but these same agents are the ones that may show a $750,000 home without even asking one pre-qualification question. Averaging over 400 unique visitors per day to my San Diego real estate site, I know my suggestions really can benefit those of you who implement them. These are not theoretical ideas, but, field tested and proven techniques.
- Show the current average home prices for San Diego on the entry page of your site. My data looks like:
- California Real Estate Prices
- San Diego Average Residential Detached sales price thru May 2005 -- $699,882(Source: S.D.A.R.)
- Calif. median home price -- July 05: $540,900 (Source: C.A.R.)
- Calif. highest median home price by C.A.R. region July 05: Santa Barbara So. Coast -- $1,325,000 (Source: C.A.R.)
- Calif. lowest median home price by C.A.R. region July 05: High Desert -- $298,950 (Source: C.A.R.)
This one step dramatically reduces the 'dreamer' type of email.
- All inquiry forms on your site should be set up so that if vital information is omitted, the form will remind the visitor when they try to submit it that the fields need to filled in for the form to work. What information you want is up to you. Many times, personally, I do not require the phone number. This is because I feel that many may fear unwanted 'sales' calls. Plus, after all they are contacting me via the Internet vs. my toll-free phone number!
I do require the following basic information:
- Full name
- Address
- Email address
- Working with an agent? Yes or No!
Depending on the form, other information will be required. Keep in mind, these people know about you and are requesting your time. If they will not provide you their basic personal information, how serious can they really be?
Perhaps, key to saving your valuable time is my last suggestion:
Immediately upon receipt of an inquiry from your site, you or your assistant should reply with a request for some small bit of additional information. If you do not receive a timely reply to your inquiry, why invest any more time on this inquiry?
What should you ask for depends on the type of inquire. I ask for such information as:
Their time frame, area of town they my want, will they be available to preview property, would they consider a condominium, etc.
Another approach is to just be right up-front with all unknown inquires. I have been using an automated form memo. If you would like a copy, send me an email and I will be happy to share it with you.
Proper time management is crucial to any successful business. Management of your Internet inquires will increase your productivity! "Until you value yourself, you won't value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with It." -- M Scott Peck
For additional insights into the Internet productivity, search engine placement software programs web site promotion, click here .
Bob Schwartz is a Certified Residential Specialist, broker with Brokerforyou in San Diego Ca. & co-owner of an Internet search engine optimization firm specializing in domain name registration & Internet domain website hosting. Bob received his BBA majoring in computer programming. Bob is an expert witness for major San Diego law firms, has served on the Consumer Affairs Community of the San Diego Association of Realtors, past president of a local HOA, co-owner of a condominium management Co. and directs a multi-state high traffic network of legal referral sites. Bob can be contacted at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .
