From time to time I check out Real Estate search phrases, in Google and Yahoo primarily, ie Virginia Beach Real Estate, Virginia Beach Homes for Sale, etc, Virginia Beach Real Estate Blogs, etc and see what comes up tops in the organic results. (I must confess that I fall back on Pay Per Click from time to time.)
I am, for the most part, frustrated with the number of national sites that rank high (top4-5), almost exclusively, At least in the Virgina Beach, Chesapeke, Suffolk, Norfolk and surrounding areas of Va.
Realtor.com and Homegain are prevelent in the natural results in both Google and Yahoo; Google has a Google Base site that has a conglomeration of different Real Estate related information from The Real Estate Book, Homes.com, Harmon Homes, FSBO sites, and individual Real Estate Co's and Realtors who add some of their listing to the mix. Of course Trulia, Zillow, Cyberhomes.com, Living Choices.com, etc, with their advertising, are hanging around.
In my opinion, the Home Buyers are primarily the ones getting shortchanged with these National Sites in Real Estate. Most of these sites have an incomplete, smaller percentage of available listing on their site, and many times they have a lot of dated information ie listings that have closed months ago still showing active. Also, National Sites use extensively, computer software that utilizes publically available information nationally, that manytimes is not up to date or skewed because they don't have the ability to add personal local knowledge to make the information nearly as valuable as it could be. Home Buyers are not getting all they can get , too much of the time, with these National Sites.
My recommendation to potential Home Buyers is to utilize Local Sites with Local Realtors. There are plenty of great local Realtors with local updated, comprehensive sites in the Virginia Beach area and all across the US. You'll get good, honest, thorough, caring, up to date, accurate, complete information and knowledge and they'll find you that "just right Home".
Jim from Va Beach
www.hrmls.com/jameswillis See ALL Homes for Sale in Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Norfolk, and all surrounding areas of Va---Updated 3 Times Daily Plus comprehensive Local Information on 10 Great Local 'Links" Plus Jim's Virginia Beach Real Estate Blogs!
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None of those national sites were designed to help home buyers. They were most certaintly not designed to help local agents.
They are, always have been and always be, generating leads to sell to us (Homegain) or generating advertising revenue (Realtor.com).
The Internet is a hard place to compete. The national sites have big investment partners or they are public companies with public money.
Hard to compete.
I would like to add a comment here... There are several advantages to searching local real estate sites over the national ones - and this is a big advantage to buyers....
What do buyers want to see when they are searching property online?
Photos, more photos and virtual tours, media etc....
Local sites typically show all of the available photos from the MLS, whereas on realtor.com and other sites agents have to pay to enhance their listings. Then on the national sites you end up with a bunch of listings with only the main photo.
If buyers want to see the pics etc... better to find the local sites.
Jim, what is interesting too, is who owns some of these national sites. The home buyer definitely loses out and if the national companies have their way, the home buyer will lose out completely. We need the home buyers and sellers and they need us more than they can possibly realize.