How do you shop for real estate online?

photo credit: svenwerk

Yesterday, I had a long meeting with 2 top producing agents that work at Realty Executives.  They’ve each been in the business a very long time (50ish years combined experience).  The reason they wanted to meet with me (a relative neophyte in comparison), was my experience with online marketing programs.  This blog, for example.  Google ad words as another.  Even craigslist.  I have used, and will continue to use these, as well as many other online tools and techniques to market for new clients, tenants, buyers, owners, sellers, investors, or whatever it is we should call someone that’s interested in shopping for or selling real estate.

The reason for the meeting, was that my esteemed colleagues had just signed up with Fox News 10 and My 45 to become one (or in this case two) of 40 agents that will be featured on the Phoenix Fox website as area real estate experts.  For the small sum of $12,000, these 2 agents purchased the right to be exclusive owners of a corner of Phoenix.  My jaw dropped at that number too.  It’s ok, I’ll giving you a second to recover.  I’ve had 24 hrs now, so the shock and awe has faded a tad.

Exclusivity is a great thing, and presumably Fox’s website has a lot of traffic.  Not only will my colleagues be featured/exclusive on the website, there will be teasers during the news broadcasts, encouraging people to visit the website for more real estate info.  That also seems like a pretty good thing.  The talking head on TV says, “for more information visit the website,” and then when you visit the website, if you end up looking for homes in the right area, you’ll be nudged along to work with the area experts that are featured.

In comparison to the Fox News approach, lets compare the cost of using a Google AdWord campaign to target someone to visit my website.  ”Phoenix Realtor” for example is going to cost you about $5/click.  After the click, you still don’t know who is doing the clicking, but hopefully where the click takes the person has some really good content encouraging them to call, email, or in some way “capture” that person and convert it into a “lead” (I’m not a huge fan of that word, btw, but it serves the purpose for this discussion).  My personal marketing question is, will the Fox News approach garner more business than a high budget AdWord campaign?  At least, that’s today’s $12,000 question.

But what seemed more important to me, was whether my colleagues were really in a position to garner the potential benefits of their investment.  Is the approach of being featured at Fox going to result in someone clicking on them, learning more about them, and eventually contacting them directly?  Will there be enough of the other real estate content at the Fox website to keep you interested and engaged while you ponder your real estate decision? 

And this is where we get to the title of the post:  How do you shop for real estate online?  Is searching the MLS for properties currently listed for sale, what you care about when shopping online?  Is searching for a real estate agent, what you are thinking of when shopping for real estate online?  Is it a combination of the 2?  Are you also looking for news about the real estate market, with opinion about where it might be headed?

I know people fall into all of those types of online real estate shoppers.  What I think there is the most of, however, are folks that are searching for a very specific property that is north of, south of, east of, west of, priced between XXX and YYY with ZZZ bedrooms.  And at the point they find that online, they are going to look on the page for any phone number to call, and want to buy that property through the number on the page, right now.  These online shoppers don’t necessarily know or understand what a real estate agent does to add value to their buying process.  They only think that they need one of us to accomplish their goal of buying a home.  They’ve done all of the research, they’ve picked out their home, and now they want the agent to write a contract. 

I estimate that far more than half of all online shoppers of real estate, are shopping in exactly this way.  Why do I think that?  Because the old teambelt.com has a registration that is needed before you can actually search MLS.  And most of the time, registration is filled out fictitiously.  Why would that be?  Because those online real estate shoppers want to stay anonymous longer.  Much, much longer.  It’s also why I don’t require someone to register here to search the MLS.  Here you can stay anonymous for as long as you want.  So you are free to search for yourself, on their own timetable, with no pressure.  It’s exactly how I feel when I buy a car these days.  I can’t stand the pressure you get placed under at some car dealerships, and have resorted to using email as my tool of choice for shopping for a car. 

Diving in a bit deeper, I asked my 2 colleagues how prepared they were to work with an internet real estate shopper.  This is essentially their first foray into working with an internet buyer/seller.  The interesting thing, was that neither of them liked to work via email.  They both said they really wanted their client to call them and talk to them in person.  In my mind, I said, “destined for failure.” 

Will the $12,000 gamble pay off for my colleagues?  Honestly, unless they make personal business habit changes and adapt very quickly, I doubt it.  Will it work for anyone that signs up at Fox News?  I don’t think it will work better than a similarly priced AdWord campaign.  Will a few agents break even, or even make money?  Probably a lucky few that are otherwise well positioned.  The problem I see is that I don’t think enough real estate shoppers are going to start, finish, or continue their shopping on Fox’s website.  Some people will, but I don’t think enough people will go there for every agent to see a return on their $12,000 investment.  At least Fox acknowledges there is some risk with the program, and is allowing people to cancel after 6 months if it isn’t working.  I’ll be curiously watching to see how it goes, especially as some of the bells and whistles Fox is going to throw at this are very intriguing.

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