Marketing New Construction Real Estate

There has been a discussion in the Inman forums about NAR mandating June 2009 of RETS. Please click here to view that post.

One of the services of our company is providing MLS/IDX solutions for Realtor’s and brokerages’ websites. We deal first hand with the data feeds. My opinion is from a software developer’s viewpoint.

Some of the comments talked about providing data to 3rd party companies. That boat has already left the dock and will never come back. The reality is that the listing data (with or without RETS) is already being provided to 3rd party companies.

Our subject at hand is the mandating of RETS and how that would effect Realtors. IMHO, there should be very little change in today’s landscape and business processes for Realtors. The listing data feeds are already out there. The biggest impact will be for 3rd party companies.

The current lack of a data standard creates a huge issue for 3rd party companies. Each board’s data feed contains a different data schema (if you’ve ever wonder why the information about your listing is wrong on your website, this is usually the main cause). Because we pull the listing data from multiple boards; what we get is a jumbled mess of listing data. Our system then has to sort through this mess and turn it into something useful. The mandating of RETS will make life much simpler for 3rd party companies. Instead of having to account for a thousand different data schemas we only have to account for one.

Mandating RETS will provide a lot of positive impact for Realtors. In my humble opinion, I don’t think the mandating of RETS will increase the Realtor’s cost (marketing dollars spent, keywords, etc) of doing business. In actually, it should lower the costs. Software companies can redirect the resources and personnel that was being used to manage and sort data feeds into R&D. I think there will be an acceleration of new tools and features for Realtors to benefit from.

I’m personally very excited about the mandating of RETS.

For those of us who live in smaller markets; technology gets to us last.  That’s one of the things that I really miss about living in a big city.  Down in Naples, we are finally getting some of the fun stuff like fast wireless Internet (ATT Wireless’ 3G network) and now Google map’s Street View.  Street view is an awesome addition to Google Maps. 

SW Florida, being a vacation and 2nd home destination, many buyers and renters make their purchase/rental decisions sight unseen.  Before Street View, they may have a few photos to work off; now they can really explore the neighborhood and make more informed decisions. 

Specific address can be embedded and linked directly to Street View.  You can now better inform your prospects by adding Street View to your real estate listings.  Trulia.com has implemented in the listings on their website. 

The upside is that buyers will be able lower some anxiety by being able to view the neighborhood.  The downside is that i areas of high change (like Naples) the pictures can get outdated pretty quickly. I’m not sure how often Google comes back to update pictures … my guess is not too often. 

None the less, it’s really cool to see Street View to finally hit my area. 

Here’s an example of Street View:

View Larger Map

In a soft market where the volume and velocity of sales have slowed down significantly, a lot of companies/people are cutting back on their marketing. Right now is the time to do more marketing! If we focus on marketing now, we can captures more market share because there’s less competition. Although we have less dollars to spend on marketing, the key is to spend those dollars effectively and understanding (not guessing) how those dollars are producing (ROI).

In developing a marketing budget and strategy, there are a few things that we should do.

1. Try new marketing avenues
2. Focus on attracting internet buyers/online shoppers
3. Track and quantify every effort/dollar (ROI)

Try New Marketing Avenues: If sales are sluggish and we are not receiving results; try something new! Using the same marketing avenues and efforts will produce the same results! We all understand this but for some reason, maybe because it’s comfortable, we continue the same marketing efforts but expect the results to be different. Get out of the usual routine.

Focus on attracting internet buyers/online shoppers: With 90% of real estate buyers already shop online for homes, we need to focus our marketing efforts to attract these online shoppers. We should allocate a larger percentage of our marketing efforts/budgets online.

In the real estate industry, online shoppers are our ideal clients/demographics (especially if we are looking to accelerate the velocity of our sales). Here are some interesting statistics (thanks to Dakno Marketing).

• The average internet buyer spends an only 2.2 weeks working with the Realtor to find their home. The traditional buyer spends almost 6 weeks!

• Internet Buyers only previewed an average of 6.65 homes while the Traditional Buyer previewed 21.7.

Buyers who use the web as an important part of their buying process are usually savvy and have already invested the time to educate themselves. We can spend less time educating and more time selling.

Track and quantify every effort/dollar (ROI): Unlike expensive traditional media (newspapers, magazines, billboards, painted busses, etc), online marketing is track able and quantitative. It’s tracked automatically (avoid the human error associated with asking “how did you hear about us”) so the data is accurate. Every online marketing effort (paid or free) is 100% track able. If set up correctly, we can use Google Analytics (which is a free service) to calculate our actual ROI. Understanding which marketing avenues and campaigns are effective is one of the most important factors of any marketing.

What online/marketing avenues have worked (or not worked) for you?