You Having a Good Web Site
Just Stopped Being an "Option."
By Bill Koelzer

If you ever wondered whether having a good Web site is worth it, stop wondering. It is.

The National Association of Realtors® 2003 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers cited a staggering statistic; more buyers now use the Internet than their local newspapers to find a home.

In fact, in the first half of 2003, 66% of homeowners used the Internet to look for a home while just 49% used the newspaper. Of actual homebuyers, 93% used the Internet to see homes and 22% used it to find neighborhood information. (This is why you should offer MLS searching or VOW [Virtual Office Website] right in your own Web site, or at the least, show home listings.) Yet, agents continue to spend far more money on print advertising than on Internet advertising. Where do YOU spend the most money?

The NAR study shows that not only did people look for homes online, but also 71 percent of them either looked at or drove past a home they'd originally found on the Web. Forty-six percent of these actually walked through the home, and 18 percent chose their agent from among those with Web pages.

What does this tell you? It tells you that if you are not tending to your web site, you are just giving away a huge percentage of your business to agents who are. Especially to those offering MLS search inside their sites. The percentage of business you'll give away will likely increase from now on up to 10% a year as more people embrace broadband, thus making online browsing more pleasurable.

Think I'm kidding about you losing business to more Web-proficient Realtors®? I'm not. In fact, if you do not get yourself Web proficient---not just "there" on the Web, but PROFICIENT---within the next year, I recommend that you consider getting out of real estate altogether.

Back in 1997, about 50% of homebuyers found homes through agents, 17% from yard signs and only two percent through the Internet.

Now, 41% find homes they buy through a real estate agent; 16% percent find them through a yard sign, and 11% percent through the Internet.

Right away, you're reading the above and thinking that the Internet has stolen business away from agents. Nay! The study shows that 90% of those who used the Internet also used an agent to buy their home. And as cited earlier, 18% of them found their agent on the web.

What does this tell us? You need a Web presence to stay competitive. Not only to just be "present," when people seek homes online, but to have as DOMINANT a presence as possible. Why? So that your site comes up above those of competing agents in your cities served. As I look online around the non-metro areas of the U.S, I see how phenomenally easy, with minimal effort, it would be for one agent in a city to come up number one on search engines, and in local community sites, for that city, ahead of all other agents there.

But do I usually see one agent taking that commanding lead? Rarely. Why? Rural agents that I've talked to think that since everyone in town knows them, they don't need to bother. They are sooooo wrong. Buyers from other cities and states wanting to relocate to that city WOULD find them if they had a domineering web site, which wouldn't take much, considering the quality of most rural agent site competition.

Another reason to have a good web presence is that very few homebuyers repeat their next purchase with their previous agent, so even your local townies might choose you as they compared your excellent site to lesser ones of other agents. My advice to rural agents and agents (and their sometimes Neanderthal office managers) everywhere: Get the very best professional Web site that you can afford. Then get yourself reciprocal links with remote agents and update the site's content and search engine friendliness until it's better than that of any agent in town. Sorry, but that is the rule for maximum success. You CAN do it, too!

My Realtor® wife, and I began doing that a few years ago and now her site dominates those of other agents in her Southern California county of three million people. Don't believe me? Go to www.Google.com and enter "Orange County Real Estate" or "Orange County MLS" (no parentheses) and see. Neither of us knew squat about the Web when we began. We just kept doing what Advanced Access told us to do and gradually built her site. You can do the same.

Why give away 20% of your business; maybe 30% next year, and likely 40% after that? How long will you survive? Face it. Consumers are going to be using the Web increasingly as they embrace broadband in record numbers, and if you're not there big time, you'll lose. Be a winner. Get serious. Or, don't learn Web marketing and become obsolete within the next few years.

Consider less newspaper and more Internet advertising, especially in your own city web sites. (Example: www.san-clemente.com).

Learn Web marketing. Mold your site gradually into the best one in your area. As you do, you'll wonder, as we did, how life suddenly got so easy, and so financially rewarding, so very fast.

  Read the following from real estate professionals who are using Advanced Access' Marketing Tips to their advantage:

"Thank you for helping me out with this. FYI, yesterday I rec'd a call from a gal that said she wanted to increase my presence on the web.. I told her I was quite happy with my current site and it was getting tons of hits monthly and quite a few leads. She asked who I was with....I mentioned AA and she laughed and said that was who she was with. She usually cross references names with current customers, but I slipped through. Anyway, I mentioned you were GREAT!! Thanks Again and Happy Holidays."

Suzie Sables Fessler, ABR, MBA

"As always you and everyone there are doing a great job and being with you is one of the best decisions I have ever made."

Jeff Lempke, e-PRO, GRI