4114Homes.com - Stephen M. Wigg

If you find a great programmer that knows Google Maps like Rich Raposa, your visitors to your site that love Google maps will return time and again. We're in the early stages of redesigning our website. "Location, location, location" is an understatement with our new features such as "Search Map", which allows you to find places near the home you're looking for. Also, you can check traffic, Wikepidea, photos and videos. Click on the legend of the maps!

More and more cities are facing the loss of the Weekend Real Estate sections. Why? Why not? Nobody uses it. What is replacing printed media?

• Do the Consumer-Facing MLS systems, which are now in 50% of the markets, solve that problem?
  • Some are very successful. They are expensive but are worth it. The one in Houston provides an average of 17 leads per agent per month.
  • Why isn't there advertising on those high traffic sites to off-set the costs to the agents and brokers?
• How does a consumer find where Open Houses are today?
  • They go to each of the big brokers' websites and takes notes?
  • Do they realize those broker sites are showing all MLS listings? Not often.
• We're trying to address that issue with 4114OpenHouses.com. One central database, displayed with simplicity but all the information a buyer would need to get excited about a house.
• What are the issues regarding an MLS putting out software to the public?
• A consumer-facing MLS system will do one thing over all else, "You list it, you sell it." Is this so wrong?

We've learned a lot while designing our website.

• Agents contact only 49% of internet leads.
• Realtor.com's record is approximately more than 71% of the leads generated from there go unanswered.
• 75% of the leads take more than 24 hours
• Average time for response of those that do is 16 hours.

Sofware is a service, not a bunch of screens. What a good software program will do is improve the service to consumers.

You list it, you sell it. Are agents and brokers ready for that?

I typed in 4114openhouses, our Omaha Real Estate website in Google and I was shocked and dismayed to see what came up, albeit not 4114openhouses.com. Our programmer had all the questions to a blog about how to do stuff on our site ahead of our domain name. We had defunct pages from our online demo that had little or nothing to do with our domain any longer.

So, what did we learn? "Big brother is watching" is an understatement! I put up a joke picture of a caveman and it was picked up ahead of 4114openhouses in the Yahoo! search. Sometimes we want to be found but other times? Be careful out there!