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Realty agents use the Internet to help make sales - By Beth W. Orenstein
Special to The Morning Call
December 2, 2007
Don Bradbury, an agent with Coldwell Banker Heritage Real Estate in Quakertown, writes a blog on real estate.
Kelly Link, a Coldwell Banker agent in Emmaus, took one of her listings and made a podcast -- a virtual tour that users can download from the Internet and play on a portable device such as an iPod or video-enabled cell phone.
Shannon Murray Corsale, an agent with ReMax 100 in Nazareth, puts her listings on MySpace, which is a social network, rather than post on a traditional real estate Web site.
Those are but a few of the many ways real estate agents are using the latest technology to help sell homes in a down market.
Industry studies show that 80 percent of all buyers today start their hunt for a new home on the Internet.
With numbers like that, real estate agents say, if they want to be successful, they and their listings have to be all over the Web and they have to reach out to people using communications tools including iPods, iPhones and other video-enabled wireless devices.
''It seems that in the past, before computers, as a Realtor you were constantly sending postcards and letters and knocking on doors,'' Bradbury says. ''Now it's all about the Internet.''
Bradbury adds that not too long ago he didn't even know what a blog was. Now he uses the Realtor's version of MySpace, ActiveRain.com, to write a daily article about real estate and post it on his blog.
''I think it's the way to go. It's the future,'' he says.
His topics are anything and everything real estate related from home inspections to mortgages. Other agents as well as members of the public can read his articles and add comments.
Sometimes a client will inspire his day's topic. Such was the case with a potential buyer who stood him up after scheduling an appointment to see a listing he had put on Craigslist, an Internet site that offers free classifieds ads.
Bradbury used his blog to ask other agents how long they wait for someone they have never met and if they had had similar experiences with Craigslist contacts. ''I wondered if my experience was characteristic of Craigslist,'' he says.
Because of his crazy schedule, Bradbury can't always write at the same time every day.
''I do it when I can,'' he says, ''usually at night before I go to sleep or first thing in the morning.''
Bradbury tries not to spend more than an hour a day on his blog. However, he finds it's worth the time it takes. Since he started his blog in mid-September, he has gotten at least two listings and a sale from it. The agents, buyers and sellers contacted him after seeing something on it that made him stand out to them, he says.
''There are some 4,000 Realtors in Bucks County,'' says Bradbury, who was the ''computer person'' at an oil company in Doylestown before becoming a real estate agent four years ago. ''I want to be different.''
Kelly Link says she doesn't know whether the podcast she had made helped her sell that home. She represented the sellers and never asked the buyers if they had seen it. However, she says, the buyers appeared to be in their mid-20s and she guesses they might have been up on the latest technology.
Link had read about making podcasts for listings in the technology section of a Realtor magazine and thought she would try it.
''I was trying to cover all my bases advertising-wise,'' she says. ''So many people have iPods and iPhones, and I figured if they were looking up real estate in that neighborhood with their iPhones, they could find the podcast and take a look at it.''
The cost to make the podcast was $29, which Link didn't mind because the listing was for more than $300,000.
''If a home is over the $300,000 price range, I'll make more commission so I spend more advertising dollars,'' she says. Also, she says, in this market, houses priced at $300,000 and above take longer and require more effort to sell.
Link expects that podcasts will soon be just another commonly used tool for tech-savvy agents to market their listings.
With podcasts, she says, ''people won't have to wait to get to their computer to see a listing. They can watch it on their phones.''
A real estate agent for nearly three years, Link says, however, that she is still experimenting with what technology does and doesn't work.
''Some things work in some areas and some don't. You have to do what works for you…and stay up on the technology end of it,'' she says.
Shannon Corsale knows of at least one time where her listing a home on MySpace led to its sale.
Another agent who was perusing MySpace stumbled across the listing. He clicked on the listing, sent her an e-mail, made an appointment for the buyer to see it, and ''in days we had an agreement of sale,'' she says. ''We just closed on it last month.''
The home had been on the market about four months and had been listed in all the traditional real estate sites as well including the Lehigh Valley Association of Realtor's site that lists all properties its members have for sale.
Corsale, a real estate agent for five years, believes ''the market is boundless when you network'' and uses every one of the latest ways she knows of to advertise her properties.
She not only does MySpace but also Craigslist, Facebook, a social Web site similar to MySpace used largely by students, LinkedIn, a professional network, Yahoo groups and Google groups. She even has a page on a Latino version of MySpace, MiGente.com.
Corsale says she is fortunate that her teenage daughter is a computer wiz and that she can help her update her pages and post her listings on those sites.
A former Agere engineer, Joseph Finnerty of Long & Foster Real Estate in Bethlehem Township says that if it hadn't been for the technological tools out there he might not have been able launch a career in real estate three years ago.
He says agents who have sold a lot of homes in the Lehigh Valley over the last 20 years probably have a large sphere of influence and a large number of referrals. But someone like himself, who is not from the Valley and is relatively new to the field, has to find a way to build a database of clients.
Because of his background -- he has a master's in electrical engineering -- he determined he would use the Internet and always be one of the most tech savvy agents in the Valley.
''The stats show that most buyers start off on the Internet, so I've put a lot of faith in the Internet,'' he says.
Finnerty purchased 67 different domain names including LehighValleyhomebuyer.com, LehighValleyhomeseller.com, and LehighValleyhomesonline.com. That way when people are searching the Internet for homes for sale in the Lehigh Valley, they're likely to hit one of his sites and if they see something they like, will be linked back to him.
Finnerty has not yet bought property addresses as domain names, ''but I'm seeing them out there,'' he says. (For example, a home at 123 Main Street would be http://www.123mainstreet.com.)
If a house has its own Web site, that information can be included on the for-sale sign put in its front yard so people driving by can look it up, Finnerty says.
Finnerty also owns lehighvalleyrealestateblog.com and, like Bradbury, writes a blog as often as he can.
He writes mostly about real estate but will occasionally promote a charity event. One time he wrote about a lost cat.
Finnerty has not tried using Facebook or MySpace yet, but he's seriously thinking about it.
One concern the agents who are into the latest technology have is that some of the podcasts and networking Web sites such as Facebook and MySpace attract mostly younger people -- too young to be in the market for a home.
However, they say, the students will grow up and need to buy homes and so it's probably a good idea to introduce them to real estate early on.
Eventually, they'll be the majority of homebuyers and it will be second nature to them, Corsale says. ''Younger people just grow up with this technology and people in their 30s are very comfortable with this technology.''
While some agents are using the latest technology to drive business, they say that buying and selling a home still requires -- and probably always will -- some face-to-face interaction.
The Internet and its tools are great for helping people identify properties they may be interested in, the agents agree, but once buyers narrow their choices, they are going to want to see them.
Bradbury says every once in a while someone will buy a home over the Internet, sight unseen. It happened to him not too long ago with a listing he had in Quakertown. The buyers were in Berlin and had their agent send them photographs, which they looked at in Germany. Satisfied they bought the house.
But for the most part, he says, while the Internet is a great starting point, it's up to the tech-savvy agent to take it from there.
Beth W. Orenstein is a freelance writer. - Real Estate Editor Eloise DeHaan
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