As I am sure you are all aware, the Internet has become ubiquitous in the real estate industry as a vehicle for presenting properties to potential buyers. Most of us have our own website (if you don’t, you should!), and rely on that plus MLXChange to get our listings out to the world.
If you saw my posting in the company blog some weeks ago, you know that there are dozens, if not hundreds, of websites where your listings can appear. In many cases, they’re going to show up on the web without you doing anything. In other cases, you can exert some control over where they appear, and what their content is – something that’s important in reducing the number of times your listing appears under someone else’s banner.
The Basic Sites
When your listing is entered into MLXChange, five things happen within 48 hours:
- Your listing is available to all Realtors in the region through MLX
- Your listing is available to the public via EWM.com
- Your listing is available for other Realtors to use through IDX (Internet Data Exchange).
- Your listing is available to the world through Realtor.com
- Your listing is syndicated to several partner sites.
I am not going to try to unravel the tangled process by which this all happens – that’s its own rather lengthy post. Instead, I want to share with you some things you can do to take advantage of the syndication process.
Preparation, Perception, Process
In an earlier blog posting, I made some recommendations for a process to follow when you get a new listing.
Preparation
Here is a summary of what I wrote:
- Completely fill out the MLS input sheet – get as much information as you can
- Write out multiple versions of your remarks, from a short phrase (about 140 characters for IDX) to a full-blown description of the property (1,000 – 2,000 characters). My strong recommendation here is to NOT be too flowery – be clear, concise, descriptive, but not mushy.
- Scan any supporting documentation you might have – disclosures, special addendum, etc. Make sure they are clear.
- Take good, clear photos of the property, inside and out, that allow a viewer to get a good idea of what they are seeing.
- Write a brief description (20-100 characters) of each photo. I find it name the photos; you can use the name as an index in Word or in a spreadsheet to track the descriptions
Bottom line: Spending a little extra time at the start of the listing process will benefit you later on!
Perception
One of the “difficulties” most of us have to overcome is that posting the same information on multiple websites is a bad thing. After you’ve posted the same photos and descriptions to five or six sites, you start to worry people will be bored – and you start getting creative by writing a custom description each time you post. Don’t give in!
Put yourself in the place of a buyer searching the web for a home. They’re probably going to start on Google, and they might start with something like “Miami Homes” (try it). They’ll get pages and pages of sites, from Realtor’s personal sites, to Realtor.com, to aggregator sites, and a bunch of paid ads. There’s no rhyme or reason, and most people use multiple sites as they search.
If they do find your property, it’s will to be a two- or three-contact experience: they hit the first posting, click in for more info, and then click through to your site. If you’re consistent, using the same photos & info, most visitors will see them only once or twice in a session; if they encounter them again, it will be through a different search path, and it’s doubtful that they will think less of you for repeating!
And finally, remember that even though somewhere around 95% of buyers use the internet to help them find a home, chances are they are using the facility as a supplement to a Realtor – I know that our customers use the web extensively to research neighborhoods and listings. My gut feeling is that the majority of buyers are doing the same thing.
Bottom line: Don’t your perception OF the search obscure the buyers participation IN the search!
Process
And finally: You have to have a process that you follow each time, otherwise, you will be overwhelmed by it. The more preparation you do, with repetitive posting in mind, and the more you “checklist” the posting and management process, the less time it will take, and the better you will do – and the better results you will get.
Syndication
Syndication on the web is the active sharing of information through partnerships established between different websites and web vendors. The most common form of syndication for real estate is that of MLXChange sharing listings with Realtor.com. Over the past two or three years, though, real estate syndication sites have multiplied, making (to my mind) Reator.com an expensive indulgence, rather than a viable site – most of our referrals to our primary website come from Google, and Yahoo, and some of the other syndication sites. Realtor.com usually runs a distance fifth or sixth in the pack.
What you need to understand about syndication is this: you can have no control of the process, or you can have some control of the process; you cannot have total control. Your listings are going to show up in a lot of different places, and sometimes under other agents’ names, and there’s little you can do to control it. This article is to give you some control over the process.
My goal is to give you some techniques to get your listings out to the broadest possible audience with a minimal amount of effort.
Free Websites
There are several sites where you can create a nice website for free (each has a premium membership option, but the basic signup is enough to post). The advantage of these sites is that most will syndicate your listing out to a number of other sites, once you’ve posted your listings.
Here are the websites that I’ve found that I think are the best:
This site syndicates out to a LOT of other sites, and gives you formatted postings for Craig’s List and Backpage. What I like about this site is that it gives a good presentation, and provides rich statistics about the hits you get on the site.
RealBird also syndicates out to a variety of sites, and also has some connections to social networking sites, like FaceBook, YouTube, and more. This site has some very nice mapping features, and they seem to be working hard to enhance that part of their presentation.
As with the first two, this site syndicates listings out to other partners, giving you a wider exposure.
- Other site accounts
You’re going to want to set up logins at a few other sites – these aren’t exactly Realty sites, but they are places where you can post a listing and have it syndicated out to a broader base:
Your Sequence of Events
First 24 Hours
- Go to www.CyberHomes.com. Search for the property, then click the “Refine Value” tab.
Update the information as much as you can. Cyberhomes is a Zillow wannabe; they present property valuations and neighborhood info similar to Zillow. I don’t think they are anywhere as good as Zillow, but they are sponsored by FINRES, and are getting a broader exposure. The reason you need to get here fast is that once the property is listed on the MLS, it will “connect” to this site, and you cannot update or correct the posted information any more.
- Post to any full websites you have, including the ones listed above (Point2, RealBird, etc.)
The reason for this is that you want your postings to hit the syndication sites first, before the IDX links hit. That lets you bring the viewer back to one of your managed sites, not someone else’s.
- Update your EWM page as soon as the listing hits; EWM’s info is picked up by several syndication sites, and you want the full info to be available right away.
- Visit Zillow.com and claim the property as listing agent. A Number of syndication sites also post to Zillow, but if you get their first, you become the top hit in their index, and can better manage the information displayed.
Follow up
Once you’ve taken care of the steps above, it’s a question of management: price changes, new info, etc., can be posted to the top-level sites you’ve set up. They will roll that info out to the partner sites over a period of 24-48 hours. If you’re really ambitious, here are some other sites where you can login and post (many of these will be tied to the sites above, but direct posting usually gets you higher in the index than the partner posts):
- Clickable Directories.com
- Homescape.com
- Homes.com
- Hotpads.com
- Oodle.com
- PropBot.com
- Trulia.com
Last but Not Least …
I strongly recommend using a spreadsheet to track what you’ve posted where, especially for sites you’ve posted directly too. That lets you better manage the update process, and it lets you share the sites with your sellers, to show them that you’re really an Internet Guru (but we won’t tell!!!)
One More Thing
During our office meetings, and in conversations with other Realtors, there’s a lot of “agita” about having our listings hijacked by other Realtors. In some cases, that’s a deliberate act – like on Craig’s List, but in many, many cases, it’s inadvertent. Because the syndication of listings has become so prolific, and because IDX can cause listings to appear on Realtor or Brokerage sites automatically, it’s more often the case that your listing was hijacked by the system, not a person. In today’s market, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, because it makes one more site where your listing can be found. As much as we’d like to sell our own listings, the fact is that the majority of listings involve another Realtor. Personally, I welcome that cooperation and exposure! Plus, it’s not worth my time tracking them down and trying to correct the problem. I’d rather go out and get another listing!
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