Comments on: What I want in a real estate website

By: Real Central VA - Tracking the Charlottesville and Central VA real estate market and more » A new website and unintended consequences

Wed, 23 Aug 2006 17:41:49 +0000

[...] A new website and unintended consequences By Jim Duncan As a follow-up to my “What I want in a website” – I am testing out a new website that very well may become my main real estate site. Why? Ubertor are innovative and easy to work with so far. [...]

By: Sunny Spot Realty » Real Estate Around the Blogosphere / Web

Sunny Spot Realty » Real Estate Around the Blogosphere / Web — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 14:45:32 +0000

[...] what i want in a real estate web site by Jim Duncan http://www.realcentralva.com/2006/07/19/what-i-want-in-a-real-estate-website/ [...]

By: Lonn Dugan

Lonn Dugan — Sun, 06 Aug 2006 13:53:30 +0000

I hear the web designers lament. I was (still am) one. Now it is more of a hobby.

I became a Realtor when I realized it used the same skills and payed better. Now people are willing to pay for what I can do

IMHO – Canned sites by http://www.point2agent.com do all the things mentioned so far – for 0 down and $39 – $99 a month, except upload to craigs list.

These sites are highly customizable. See my site at http://www.DuganSells.com for example.

Before you rip on the design you see there, remember there are a lot of subliminal things going on there, and about 30% of my site visitors actually register and become “leads”. That is 3x national average. So I must be doing some things right! See if you can figure out what…

One Caveat… Point2Agent does not do so well with search engines as I would like. So I create my own doorway sites – which rank nicely… see http://www.RealToledo.com and http://www.RealSylvania.com and etc…

By: Jim Duncan

Jim Duncan — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 12:55:46 +0000

It’s the maps. Graphical display of information in a simple, intuitive manner is a huge advantage. That is one feature in my next site that is a “must have.”

By: Jim Bain

Jim Bain — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 15:47:41 +0000

I recently came across Drake van de Castle’s website and was intrigue enough by the Google map feature to sign-up. (As a web designer the last think I want to do is sign-up on another website.) I’m not in the market to buy but I do like to keep an eye on the market and here are the reasons I find myself going to Drake’s site daily:
- Google Map integration
- Save listing to “My Favorites”
- Listing easy to read (CAAR need help here)
- searching based on areas within the county (ie., White Hall, Batesville)
- “My site” feature stores my searches
- any new listing meeting my search criteria, is email to me allowing me, not the agent, to stay on top of the market
- vital stats on local schools

By: Robbie

Robbie — Sat, 22 Jul 2006 16:48:25 +0000

As a professional software engineer, I second #2’s frustration. I think it’s mostly due to a misunderstanding of thinking that many real estate agents think they are a mass market, when in fact they are a large but highly fragmented market (maybe when every MLS in the USA/Canada has the same rules and data access methods, and every agent wants an identically looking web site, they might be one, but we aren’t there yet). Many also don’t seem to get that software engineers are well paid professionals. Still, I share the professional real estate agent’s frustration that the market appears to be filled with mediocre solutions developed by companies that “don’t get it”.

At Microsoft (to pick a well known example), a typical software engineer gets about $100K /year (w/ 8+ yrs experience). They also get comprehensive medical & dental benefits, air conditioned office space (it was nearly 100°F in Redmond, WA yesterday), fast computers, cheap software, free soft drinks, and many other benefits, so you figure the company is probably paying north of $125K / year per software engineer. Microsoft also has the benefit of buying benefits in bulk and knowing that whatever it develops, there’s a good chance it will sell millions of compies (Windows & Office sell in the hundreds of millions of copies) with in the first year of release. If you’re running a web development company (given the market rate for software engineering talent in Seattle), it’s impossible to develop what a realtor is asking for (a custom web site with advanced features that is inexpensive), unless you have already made signifigant inroads into that market space (say thousands of customers) and/or are willing to risk a considerable investment in R&D.

By: jim Duncan

jim Duncan — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 16:08:00 +0000

And …

uploading to Google Base and Craigslist.

By: Jim Duncan

Jim Duncan — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 11:38:49 +0000

Thanks for the comment. My fiscal goals are reasonable – I am willing pay a fair value for quality, proven work. The frustrating part is that vetting those website developers and determining their track records.

I’ve paid quite a bit for my existing site and while it’s good, it doesn’t offer much of what I have listed above.

As far as being the one and only that people visit – hey, it I don’t set high goals, what do I have to aim for?

By: insurance

insurance — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 05:26:13 +0000

As a professional web developer, I’ve experience a lot of real estate agents who want the world in their sites but offer to pay 10-20 dollars a hour with a budget of 500 bucks total.

Now I’m not sure what financially reasonable is to you but to a lot of agents, it seems like under 1,000. Any decent developer/company can create all the things you are looking for in a website but it will cost more than that.

Non-template web designs cost in excess of 1k by itself.

“- Will become the only site that consumers visit – they will want to come back every day.”
I think that is a great goal to strive for but that is just dreaming. No one only visits one site. A daily updated blog would get someone to come back daily.

By: Jim Duncan

Jim Duncan — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 16:06:51 +0000

Basecamp was mentioned to me offline as was their upcoming CRM: Sunrise.