Real Estate Virtual Assistant

With 78% of home buyers starting their home search on the Internet, real estate professionals have embraced websites and an Internet presence in a big way. Let’s face it, you need to be where the consumers are and that means the Internet.

But how many of the hundreds of thousands of real estate websites actually bring in business and generate income. I don’t have statistics, but my gut, along with discussions with agents I come into contact with as a Real Estate Virtual Assistant, tells me not many.

Rismedia.com published a great article about the 10 website “must-haves” needed to ensure success a successful and profitable website. I have included these ‘must-haves’ along with insights of my own:

1. Remember: There Is But One True Goal - Sales

If you have, or are planning to create a website, it is essential that you keep in mind that the only goal of a website, ultimately, is sales. Don’t get caught up in the vanity or technology surrounding websites (which is all too easy to do). Make sure everything on your real estate website is oriented toward your “One True Goal.”

In the early days of the Internet, websites were no more than an on-line business card with attention focused on the agent. We have learned the consumer doesn’t care about ‘you.’ He cares about ‘what is in it for me.’ Today’s websites need to give the consumer what he wants and what he wants is to look at homes.

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The old adage is ‘a picture is worth a thousand words.’ Most of us in the real estate industry believe this to be true and offer the consumer numerous photos of a property to look at with virtual tours, single property websites, video tours and the like. One would think if one picture is worth a thousand words, then 20 pictures must be worth 20 thousand words…but is this really the case?

I must say, I had never given it much thought, either as a licensed Realtor or as a Virtual Assistant, until I read an Inman article, Too much exposure can be a bad thing? The article asks the question, Is it possible that too many pictures online is preventing buyers from looking at your property and therefore a bad thing? There are 2 very different schools of thought on this question.

Point2Agent has released a new study measuring the effect multiple photos have in marketing of listings. The study researched three variables:

1. Detailed views

2. Interest in terms of interaction with the listing on a Web site (i.e. how many times visitors viewed a virtual tour, viewed the listing on a partner site, completed a mortgage calculation for the property, etc.)

3. Leads generated

The study evaluated all Point2 listings entered into their system during the first quarter of 2008. The sample consisted of more than 100,000 listings and included listings from all 50 states, every Canadian province, plus other countries worldwide. All price ranges were represented.

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It was brought to my attention by a reader of my Walk Score post, that Drive Score is also available. Drive Score shows a map of what establishments are in a property’s neighborhood and calculates a Drive Score based on the number of places within a convenient driving distance. With Drive Score, buyers can see how close establishments are by car. Homes are often located in an area where restaurants, libraries, grocery stores, hospitals and other businesses are easier to get to by car than on foot.

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It has been awhile since I first told you about WalkScore.com. This is a fun website that helps people find walkable places to live. You type in any address and Walk Score shows you a map of what’s nearby - stores, movie theaters, parks, restaurants, schools and more. It then calculates a Walk Score (or ‘walkability’) from 0 to 100.

The reason I bring up WalkScore.com again is because of an article on Inman.com the other day talking about this website. With gas prices surging over $4.00 a gallon, the ‘walkabilty’ of a neighborhood has renewed interest to home buyers.

From Inman: “WalkScore.com was developed up by Seattle-based, environmentally and socially conscious “civic software” developer Front Seat, which hopes people will use the site to find homes and apartments in ‘walkable’ neighborhoods.

Front Seat is making a Walk Score tile available to real estate professionals – or anybody else who wants to embed the tool in their Web sites – that’s been embraced by sites like postlets.com and is now generating 100,000 views a month.

Walk Score looks at the distance to ‘walkable’ locations near an address, calculates a score for each location, and combines all of the scores into a single measurement. Lerner said research shows that the average person is willing to walk less than a quarter mile to destinations they visit frequently, such as a grocery store.

A Walk Score of 25 or less means you’ll probably need to get in the car to take care of the smallest errand, while a Walk Score in the 90 to 100 range indicates a “walker’s paradise” where just about everything is in walking distance and many residents get by without owning a car.

What makes a neighborhood ‘walkable’?

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If you are like me, you really enjoy hearing about a program that will give you the desired effect in an easier, less expensive way. Picnik Photo Editing, is just that kind of program.

Although I have Adobe Photoshop, I have to admit, I hate using it…probably because I haven’t taken the time to really learn it. But I don’t want to take the time to learn it, either. I want to edit photos in a much simpler way…and Picnik does that.

Picnik is an online program that works with photos stored on your computer or from various programs, such as Facebook, Picasa, Flickr, Photobucket, Myspace, WebShots and FreeWebs. Once click of the mouse brings the photos into Picnik.

The editing features allow you to resize, crop, rotate, remove red-eye sharpen colors and exposure.

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