Real estate has gone digital. That’s a cold, hard fact. Actually, maybe that’s just a fact. You could certainly argue that it’s a good thing, and I would agree with you. Plus, you can’t argue with the consumer. According to the National Association of REALTORS®, 44 percent of people look for a property online first, before using any other medium. Why, you ask? Convenience and huge amounts of time saved. People can compare thousands of properties, and they get help narrowing down their choices with a wealth of information. This includes excellent home-searching experiences, none better than on TRIBUS’ custom real estate broker websites.
How are real estate websites being used?
As I mentioned earlier, we know that 44 percent of all buyers looked online for properties for sale as the first step taken during the homebuying process. If you consider any point in the process, 99 percent of Millennials will have consulted an online website for their home search. You can’t count out the older generations, either — 89 percent of older Baby Boomers (born 1946-1954) and 77 percent of the Silent Generation (born 1925-1945) will search online at some point in the homebuying process. Websites are clearly being used heavily, but what about them makes them useful?
Thankfully, NAR has done some pertinent research on this topic. Again, what is most useful to people tends to differ by their age, so it’s important to cover many features. Photos and online information about properties were most important to Millennials, whereas agent contact information and virtual tours were most important to the Silent Generation. This matches up well with the data that is already on real estate websites: 95 percent have property listings, 78 percent have agent/staff photos, and 56 percent have community information.
How could a brokerage stand out?
A great start would be to make sure your website is compatible with as many services and features as possible. Although TRIBUS strives to do as much as possible in-house, we can’t cover all of the bases. That’s why TRIBUS has optimized 100-plus integrations, so you’re able to use and display everything you need on your website, seamlessly. Another good option is a real estate blog. Only 11 percent of all Realtors have a blog, so make sure you get ahead of the pack! Since TRIBUS builds its platforms on WordPress, brokers can use its powerful content-management system for their real estate blog.
And as always, software and other technology is continuing to expand. When you’re with TRIBUS, you can be confident that your brokerage will keep up with the changing trends.
