And call a travel agent to book a flight. And look up a phone number in the Yellow Pages when I wanted to order pizza. Or call the restaurant for directions or to make a reservation. And when I got a new listing, I immediately called the local newspaper to make sure it got in next Sunday's edition. Fun to think that these were everyday realities only just a few years ago.
While there is still expense when it comes to marketing a home, today there are so many sites that offer listing exposure without getting your wallet out.
Here are a few of the sites to utilize in your marketing efforts (in alphabetical order). Please take special note of the aggregaters, or sites where you can upload the listing once and it goes out to numerous places:
Backpage.com- This is one of the latest Classified websites to emerge. It is similar to Craigslist where you can post in the real estate catagory for free. If you are interested in how they make money or want to learn more about them, click here. Not a major presence on the real estate scene yet, but worth noting.
Craigslist.org - When you go to this site, it is so visually unappealing and hard to navigate, you think, who uses this site? Let me tell you, a lot of people. In my job I meet with a lot of agents, and consistently I hear that this is one of their best sources of leads. Whoever posts last gets their listing on top, so be sure to repost occasionally. Don't even waste you time posting if you don't include photos. Listing with photos are tagged as such and with the site getting so populated with listings, homes without photos are easily overlooked.
Cyberhomes.com - This automated home-valuation site operated by Fidelity National Real Estate announced May 17th that they will now accept for-sale listing information from Agents. There wasn't much information about the process yet at the time of this post.
Google Base, base.google.com - More than 56% of all Internet searches on "real estate"and related terms are conducted on Google, so it is great that you now have an opportunity to leverage this traffic for free. Visit this page to see which upload method best suites your needs. http://base.google.com/base/help/realestate.html
Point2NLS.com - Become a member of this site (for free) and you you have access to many of the site's features, one of which is there Exposure EngineTM, which will pump your listing to all of Point2 NLS's syndication partners. Their syndication partners include sites like Point2Homes, Oodle, Edgeio, Yahoo Classifieds, Live Deal, and Propsmart. They make money by selling program enhancements.
Postlets.com- This is another aggregater website. Sign up for a free account. Choose your category and enter your ad information. You can upload up to 12 photos. Then the site automatically submits your ad to search engines like: Trulia, Google Base, Oodle, Backpage, Local.com, Lycos, Propsmart, Edgeio, Vast, and ByOwnerMLS.com.
Trulia.com - This is one of the fastest movers up the most trafficked real estate list as of late. They take feeds from a number of national brokerages, so if you are with one of those, there is a good chance your listing is already on the site. One of the things that makes this site different than others on the list is that they don't display the full listing detail on their site, but rather partial data and then the user have to click to the listing agent's site to see all of the details and photos.
vFlyer.com- The final aggregator on this list. VFlyer has single upload and bulk upload capabilities. Once you upload you listing, it is automatically sent to sites like: Google Base, Oodle, Vast, Trulia Edgeio and more. VFlyer is hoping to generate income by selling additional services, but the distribution system is free.
Zillow.com - (disclosure- I work for this company) Zillow is the top trafficked real estate website that allows for free postings. You can post unlimited photos, link to your website and display all of your contact information. All leads generated through the site go directly to you. You must go to the site to register, it is not partnered with any aggregater sites.
A few obscure free listing sites to note:
http://www.realestateabc.com/.com
http://www.findmyroof.com/.com
http://www.citycribs.com/.com (New York)
http://www.smalltownhomes.com/http://www.shopdreamhouse.com/
http://www.localism.com/.com - Can't forget this one!
I am sure there are others out there people are using, please feel free to contribute below.
Happy Posting!!
Photo courtesy of Sacramento Bee, Sunday, February 29, 1994
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Sara, your research will benefit many an agent...if they'er savvy enough to grasp the wealth of information you just posted and use it efficiently!
WOW! Consider yourself "Bookmarked!" And THANK YOU SO MUCH for the incredible resources you put at our fingertips!
Thanks again!
Sharon- Yes, most of the sites do have such kind of filters and have various ways to identify the duplicates.
George- I definitely can understand where you are coming from. It does take a lot of time tolearn about and post to the various sites. My comment to you is purely from a perspective of consumer (not agent) who has bought or sold about one house a year for the past six years. When I am in the process of buying or selling, I probably search on about 15-20 sites (including personal broker/agent sites). And it isn't always that one particular site drives me to make a call, but rather seeing things over and over.
Secondly, I have always used a buyer's agent when buying. So my process is that I search and search and research and research, and rather calling/emailing the listing agent, I send any questions or homes of interest to my buyers rep. So essentially the listing agent knows that a particular advertisement they ran made me take an action. But I can tell you that I have found many-a-house online.
So I am in the camp of get your listings out there as much as you can because you never know when and where that right person is going to find it.
Thanks Sara but you missed my point my friend. I have tried most every site you mentioned including Zillow with zero results except for Craigs List. If I continue to pay an assistant to post on sites that get no results where is the value in that? Also, assuming another 6 sites develope between now and the end of the year...where does all this end and should we as agents post on say 50-100 sites a year or two from now just because they are there?
Thanks for the blog. I wrote one and listed some of the ones I found out about and I am currently using. I agree that sometimes it take repeat information for it to stick and for me to go to it and use it. In this market, I don't think there are too many ways to try to get the customers to you. So the more the merrier. Its like everything else, some will love it and some will think it is too much information in one message and some will just not soak it in right now. Another blog, another day and it will be useful probably to the very one that is saying no thanks right now.
As for me, THANK YOU, thank you.
www.motheranddaughterrealty.com
Sara,
That information is so valuable for us. While I'm using a few of those sites to advertise my listings, there are tons of others I wasn't familiar with. Many thanks to you for posting.
Thanks for taking the time to gather all this information to share. Even though I already use a lot of the outlets you highlight in your post, I am constantly amazed at how many of my fellow Realtors don't know the first thing about this subject, or who any of the big players are. They think by putting their listings on their local MLS's that they are done. There is also the client's perspective to think about. In this market they want to know exactly where their property is going to be seen, and want as many people as possible to see it. This kind of marketing is a key component to our listing presentation, and is just another way agents can differentiate themselves from the pack. Yes, it’s time consuming to manage but I am hopeful that in the near future we will see multiple services launched to help us do just that.
Thanks again for the information.
This is the best post. I went to vflyer.com last night and now I have flyers for my listings. A little work putting in all the information but I soon pick up the cut and paste shortcut and now I am finished with that one. Thanks alot.
Got up early this morning to get on with the postlets.com and I love that one too. I wanted to upgrade to Plus but need credits to do that for free, and to get credits you need to invite someone to join postlets and they do join then you get credits. So if anyone is planning on joining and want me to invite them so I can get my plus upgrade, I'd love you forever.
I am loving this free stuff, hard work yeah, but its worth it to get more explosure. Again, thanks for the post.
Rosemary
www.motheranddaughterrealty.com
Excellent compilation, Sara. Thank you for sharing this with us. I am wondering if some of the marginal sites will go away, and if some clear leaders will emerge.
Add Homegain, the second most visited real estate site in the country, to the list of companies that takes free listings-and has done so for years!
HomeGain also has an instant homevaluation tool that it recently relaunched.
Indeed, Homegain had one of the original homevaluation tools way back in 1999.
try HomeGain's relaunched Homevaluation tool at http://www.homegain.com/
later in May HomeGain will add additional features to it homevaluation tool.
for free listings ann over 1.2 million other home listings visit http://www.homescout.com/
http://www.homescout.com/addlistings.html
Hi Sara, Thanks for the invite to post.
Just came across your post. I have created a new local search engine that is free to real estate agents and is a sustainable local internet advertising platform designed to provide direct lead genteration to the agent.
Please visit at www.nationalrealestatepages.com. We will be rolling out another 20 sites in addition to real estate, so our traffic should be huge. You can list for free, 10 property photos, virtual tour, list until sold, and it's local.
We have a limited # of ad spots per county, only 50, so if you know of any of your service providers that would like exclusive county advertising for only $699, please have them contact me. We make our money off the advertisers that want to take advantage of the buyers and sellers lookling for homes.