Move Inc. launches new beta for Realtor.com
Trulia mobile site announces new features
The mobile site of real estate listing firm Trulia has been upgraded, the Trulia blog just announced.
“Get information on the schools in your local area, find great local real estate professionals in our Find a Pro directory, and browse Trulia’s blogs and real estate guides for advice and guidance about the real estate process,” wrote a Trulia distribution exec. “If you have a your own blog on Trulia, you can now edit your blog and create new blog posts on your mobile phone.”
Schools are divided into elementary, middle and high school, with notations on whether private or public. Each school hotlink brings the phone owner to contact information on the site and a link to the school’s Web site.
The Find a Pro Directory is slick, and may be handier even than access via the Trulia site. The local directory will give you photos of the agent or broker, name and affiliation, a short “About Me” post, and their activity on Trulia Voices community – how many posts, how many questions answered, and the number of questions designated by the recipient as helpful. It also indicates if the agent is a member of the advanced-features Trulia Pro program. There are two links for each mobile profile – one to the agent’s complete profile on Voices and another to his or her Web site.
The sample Real Estate Guides post gives consumers tips on selling a home, including comments.
Trulia seems to have done an excellent job of providing just about everything a consumer would need to conclude a smart home purchase or sale.
For more on Trulia real estate listing features and services, and a look at the possibility of its sale to Google, see CIR 11.01. Clients, you’ll be seeing it in your e-mail box January 14. We’ll delve into the topic extensively.
Redfin launches real estate listings in Atlanta
Online real estate broker Redfin just expanded to Georgia, organized its real estate agents into local teams, and began alerting customers by e-mail as listings sell in their neighborhoods. Redfin employs its own agents, with a wage package that includes a customer satisfaction bonus in addition to salary. There’s no commission plan.
The tenth market for Redfin, Atlanta is the third local launch for 2009. The Georgia expansion includes the metro towns of Alpharetta, Buckhead, Perimeter, Suwanee and Woodstock, as well as the east portion of Cobb County. This latest expansion adds 30 percent more listings to the Redfin site.
Customers who buy a home through Redfin get half the commission refunded at closing. In West Cobb, Gwinnett, Peachtree City and Lake Lanier areas, where Redfin does not employ its own agents, the online brokerage works with partner agents who agree to provide Redfin’s level of service and transparency. The refund from partner agents is 15 percent of the commission.
“Redfin’s arrival in Atlanta is a huge win for consumers, who get more information about both properties and real estate agents, and new ways to use the Internet to get better customer service,” said James Marks, former broker, and Redfin’s Atlanta market manager, in the announcement.
Redfin is also organizing its real estate agents nationwide into local teams consisting of an agent, a coordinator and several field agents. The agent is responsible for the customer’s success from start to finish, and for team management. The coordinator assists the agent in scheduling tours and completing paperwork for closings. Field agents provide prospective buyers with short-notice access to homes for sale. Redfin pairs its agents up, so clients can be serviced seven days a week. In the past 90 days, customer service staff was doubled.
“This model gives each client the intimacy of a small team who knows the customer by name, while still offering more resources every day of the week than any one agent can deliver on his own,” said Scott Nagel, Redfin VP of real estate operations, in the announcement.
Redfin’s service is now available in the metropolitan areas of Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Seattle, Washington DC, Baltimore, New York’s Long Island and Westchester County as well as most of California, including the San Francisco Bay Area, Southern California and Sacramento.
Here’s more from the Redfin blog.
Real estate listing tips from Zillow
Real estate advertisers, and publishers who help advertisers succeed, would do well to listen to what Zillow has learned about real estate listings that do and don’t work.
Just published on the Zillow blog, the key observation of the 50 most successful recent Zillow ads was that a real estate listing gets far more response than an ad with an agent head shot. 45 of the top 50 ads had a photo of the exterior of the home, while three others had interior shots. Two displayed aerial photos. All photos were taken on a sunny day. 42 of the ads were specific about the location, either by naming the city, the neighborhood or the actual address.
For the entire list of listing tactics that sell, as well as the “how-not-to-place-a-listing” tips, visit the Zillow blog.
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