Do Real Estate Agents Get It?

As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve had some good success selling geographic (city/town .com) domain names lately. In many cases, I emailed real estate agents in the area offering to sell the city or town .com domain name to them rather than to domain investors, and the response rate was horrible. In fact, I only received a couple replies in total.

Based on this, I have to ask if real estate agents get it when it comes to generic geographic domain names. The one reply that actually gave me a bit of insight was, “the domain name is too broad” which makes some sense, but considering that I hadn’t even mentioned the price, it doesn’t really make a lot of sense to me. If the name was cheap, why not take the broad domain name and use it for more narrow purposes?

In some cases, I’ve noticed real estate agents own some great city or town .com names, but even some of those people don’t seem to “get it.” Case in point, a Realtor who owns a bunch of town .com domain names wasn’t interested in buying one of my domain names in his area (he was the second reply with just a “no thanks”). This was a town that is listed on his website as an area he services, and he has listings in that area. When he replied that he wasn’t interested in buying, I figured he might want to sell some of his names, so I asked if he’d sell his names, and he said no to that as well.

If the guy doesn’t think the names are valuable enough to buy more of them (he didn’t even ask the price of my name), why wouldn’t he be open to offers to sell these assets that aren’t valuable enough to buy? It just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

I know people either use direct navigation or search engines to research the cities and towns in which they are considering a move. A Realtor could use a .com geodomain name to supply information on real estate and town information, and it would probably rank high in the search engines for the search term. IMO, this would be good for lead generation, and it would certainly be easy to remember on a business card or yard sign.

This leads me to the question asked in the title of this post – do real estate agents get it when it comes to domain names?

What has your experience been?

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

72 COMMENTS

  1. I think the best thing to do (if you had the time & inclination) is get rank in teh googlez especially above them & then hit them up. But yeah, if I were a real estate agent (and my wife is) I’d be more interested in CityCondos.com, CityHomes.com, etc.

  2. I expect the poor response rate is in part caused by the the current financial situation. The home-buyer stimulas program has ended and sales are down again.

  3. If there’s one that can monetize small town names, the realtors can. They know the city like no one else and meet dozens of people and businesses a day.

    But the ads would just be the icing on the cake: Let’s not forget that a $250,000 sale is at least a $10.000 commission. Out of town-ers searching online would be first greeted by the realtor’s town.com site. That’s priceless.

    One can argue over the price and see if it make commercial sense but the idea definitely does.

  4. In our area many agents don’t get it. We actually purchased in a private purchase (ourcity)realestate.com recently. My business partner is a local realtor and he put up a site. Within two months of the site being up, he has 2 substantial leads.(also have 4-5 possibles) One sale and our purchase price for the domain and then some will have been repaid. He mentioned to other realtors in the area about showing their listings on the website and the response was… why? we can just buy (ourcity)realestate1.com and achieve the same thing.

    That may be true, but we have buying up a network around our area when names drop. Many names in our area (such as cityhomesforsale.com and cityhomes) had been purchased, but they were not being used and then were dropped. We picked them up for reg fee.

    Now I just want to get builders to buy into domain names but that is even a harder sell. They really don’t see any benefit.

  5. When a real estate agent is thinking about a domain name, they are not looking at it from the perspective of a domainer or domain name investor, rather as a domain name tied to a specific Web site, such as their own personal site or one for a specific property. For the latter, RE agents frequently have domain names ala 123sesamestreet.com for a property, but not necessarily a neighborhood, town or city.

    RE agents also are thinking more about the transaction than about building a community, namely as they are in the transaction business. Sure, they get most of their new clients from referrals. But at the end of the day getting some decent SEO from their own site, plus feeds from the MLS and the myriad of other sources that feed them leads or referrals, they tend to do ok.

    So rather than asking if they get it, it may be better to ask if they care at all. they may not, and in my humble opinion I think that’s ok.

    mp/m

  6. Eric you don’t get it. We are harangued by people trying to sell us stuff. we know how to get the domain names we need without you. but thanks.

  7. “Eric, My Gosh, Eric, you just don’t understand…..”

    Just kidding Elliot. Unfortunately, I think several of the posts above indeed prove that the point is not “gotten”.

    For what it is worth, I spent over ten years working at very successful direct marketing agencies and often, even after several, positive ROI campaigns and case studies, a client would still not “get it”.

    Perception is a funny thing. Very fickle.

    However, if one would develop these sites and then be able to prove daily visitors and traffic. Then, maybe, a prospect might see the light. Then they can pay hundreds a month for exposure they could have owned.

    I say, enjoy the Cape, have a good meal, and stay the course!!!

  8. –“we know how to get the domain names we need without you. but thanks.”

    How exactly if there’s just one town.com and he owns it???

    –“We are harangued by people trying to sell us stuff.”

    Coming from a real estate agent this is priceless

  9. I have seen real estate agents use City+State.tld domains or city+realestate or city+homes in various tlds to list their services. I tried last fall to promote some pure city .TV domains to real estate agents with no luck. Understandably .COM is an easier sale but in a city with a 30K+ population there are a limited number of good .COM combinations available. The logic of branding and generating real estate leads makes sense given the potential commission on a real estate transaction but it seems in general that companies prefer to spend on Adwords and SEO efforts rather than a memorable domain with potential SEO benefits.

    So I developed several South Florida sites which now rank at Yahoo for their primary keywords and even at Google for local parks. I received a contact from a national real estate agency inquiring about possibly working with them as they thought I was a real estate agent. I also see that a limited number of visitors have attempted to fill out the Leadpile form on a few of my sites but thus far none of these attempts has led to a paid lead (the form IMO asks way too many questions).

    I will likely experiment with inserting a lead contact form in a smaller market using Wufoo forms which I believe you mentioned a few weeks ago. I’ve never done lead generation so I’m cautious about attempting to do so.

    Despite the lack of interest from RE agents I recently picked up MiamiCondo.tv on a drop.

  10. Obviously they don’t get it Elliot, they are passing on prime real estate.

    I don’t get it why they don’t get it.

    If I was a Realtor I would love to have the city dot com where real estate is the number one source of income.

    See u tomm.

  11. eric

    we have aquired domains for all our twons and find this is marketing edge for our agents

    homesinyourtown.com

    we also have several vertical search engine sites that all lead to town sites

    i like idea of local domain we have homesin.com/yourtown
    or condosin.com/yourtown but i think the best will be when you copp with others to build best traffic

    town sites feature blog and b2b business directory

    YourTownStar.com

  12. Been a realotor for nearly 11 years now.

    There are many reasons why realtors dont ” get it ” , for example…

    1. Cost, from name to development, they are cheap, seroiously had 500 agents in a room get pitched a $1k personal name/design etc and laugh at the cost.
    2. The average realtor is above 50 yrs of age, slow to change and not computer savy over all.
    3. The average realtor only makes $XXXX a year! So the numbers of full time serious traders is small, may be 30 people in an office, 5 do 90% of the biz.
    etc etc etc

    Personally dont have my own site but that is due to how hard I want to work and not wether it would work.

  13. @ Josh

    I hadn’t really thought about the age thing. Truthfully, it might sound ageist, but if the real estate agent has his/her picture on the website, I generally won’t even send the email if the person looks “senior.”

    I should duck for cover now 🙂

  14. Hey Elliot:

    Big mistake. Not sure if this is only in California, but I know quite a few 50’s and 60’s individuals who have an amazing amount of tech knowledge. And they us it daily, for business, personal etc… You could seriously be eliminating qualified, interested and “loaded$” prospects.

  15. I have always suspected there is a large segment of the population that, “get it or not” …simply refuse to buy from domainers. They don’t think the domaining industry should even exist. That attitude may come back to haunt them someday if their competition buys up all the good domains in their market.

  16. DCMike – note that the link provided above merely states that geographic names cannot be used with the term realtor i.e. MiamiRealtor.com. It appears to me that MiamiFlorida.com is OK.

    “…6. Can I use a geographic location with the REALTOR® marks (e.g. Montana REALTORS®, Boston’s Best REALTOR®)? Based on Article V, Section 7 of NAR’s Bylaws, descriptive words or phrases are never to be used with the REALTOR® marks. This includes the use of the REALTOR® marks in connection to geographically descriptive terms like the names of cities, states, and places…”

  17. I think most realtors don’t get it. When people search online for real estate, they look for ‘city homes’ or ‘city real estate’ or ‘city realty’. So if you have a website for cityhomes.com with real estate info on it, you will likely rank high and get some traffic. Also, they are easy domains to remember if you use them to advertise in print, on radio, or on billboards. You also have the chance for type in traffic. Look at what realtors spend on newspaper, magazine and ppc ads. The cost of a good domain could pay for itself with one home sale. Many realtors use their own name for a domain, like JoeBlow.com for example, but most are easily forgetable and don’t describe the product people are looking for ‘homes, real estate, realty’. Some realtors do have good domain names, I’m just surprised that many don’t, but I expect they will catch on one day.

  18. I think that realtors agents like many other business’s maker & owner don’t imagine the real value of domain names impact on their business:
    [good domain=traffic= more sales]
    Domainers should learn marketing, communication,psychology of sales,… in order to promote the domain industry.

  19. As Realtor and domain developer, I can tell you with certainty a huge majority of agents don’t get it. I don’t mind at all because I’ve slowly acquired an impressive portfolio of area keyword real estate domains and built several websites, largely under the radar of the largest brokerages in the area (but not under the radar of customers). At certain points, I’ve shopped around my portfolio to the largest real estate brokers in the area and I’ve been shocked by their lack of interest.

    To illustrate my point further, I had an agent contact me about my domain a few weeks ago–He didn’t even want to consider the website in the purchase as a package along with the domain. The website is #1 is Google, Bing and Yahoo and has an impressive amount of unique content. He basically scoffed when I provided a price I’d consider selling it for. The price was not unreasonable and amounted to a few transactions generated from the site.

    Finally, I’ve found real estate agents to be completely indifferent about leads they receive. It is amazing that in an extremely competitive field where business is not booming that agents do not value or follow up on leads. Numerous experiments have been done to test Realtor response rates to leads and all have revealed that the response rate is horrible.

  20. I’ve experienced similar situations. In fact, I’ll go as far as to say that most don’t even get the value of their existing domains. In sending emails to real estate agents, I received almost 1/3 bounced emails that were sent to the addresses on their sites. That’s pretty serious. If their potential clients cant get a hold of them, they are losing serious business.

  21. I have a .ca of a pretty big neighbourhood in a major city and emailed about 20 real estate agents with listings in that part of town. It was your average “First to respond gets it” and receive NO replies. Not even a no thanks

  22. This mirrors my own experience here in the UK. We have a number of terrific consumerrealtor property search portals that work really well.

    I own some very localised .coms covering small well-known areas (groups of a few streets usually) within the expensive part of London where I used to live. I originally intended to create some local community portals for these areas with a real-estate element included however I don’t have the time to develop them.

    I contacted all 30-odd realtors in the area and ONE replied to ask the price. they genuinely don’t get it at all.

    L

  23. Individual real estate agents buy their own name.com or the specific property address.com because is much cheaper than a geo.com. The real estate brokerage business owner sees the big picture for a broad based internet marketing campaign and has a larger budget than an individual real estate agent.
    Times are together, a real estate geo.com will be a good investment at a good buy. Presently no broker owner will pay a premium price given the market conditions that will be with us for a while. I bought DenverRealEstate.com from a domainer at a reasonable price as an owner. A real estate agent would have never paid this price.

    Broker Owner
    http://www.DenverRealEstate.com

    • @ Peter

      None of the agents I emailed even asked me for the price. For all they know, I could have been selling it super cheap to cut losses. If I had been selling for $800, that’s 100 individual address .com names, which are throw-aways after a sale. A city/town .com domain name is an asset that will continue to hold or increase in value over time. Once a property is sold, an address domain name is practically worthless, and it would be difficult to find a buyer for that domain name.

      DenverRealEstate.com is a great domain name that’s worth high 5 figures IMO.

  24. Steve “I have always suspected there is a large segment of the population that, “get it or not” …simply refuse to buy from domainers. ”

    I think you’re right Steve, its not always a case that they don’t get it, sometimes they’re just against it.

    With the crash in Property sales around the world good quality keyword domains “should” be more sought after – but will they ??

    …we shall see. 🙂

  25. Hi,

    I also have quite a few (city)realestate.com and (city)homesforsale.com domains and have tried marketing them to the local Realtors.

    I have sold a few of these domains and thought they would a natural and easy to find buyers. What Real Estate Agent wouldn’t want their city/town RealEstate.com, or so I thought?

    Like you I haven’t got many responses and am surprised by the lack of interest. Part of it must be the current state of the real estate market.

    The good news should be when the market rebounds and there are new Agents entering the field again that interest win the domains will follow. These domains may be a hold for now and I find that some of them do generate revenue.

    Mike Dew
    HeadlineDomains.com

  26. quoting @Mark “For what it is worth, I spent over ten years working at very successful direct marketing agencies and often, even after several, positive ROI campaigns and case studies, a client would still not “get it”

    …However, if one would develop these sites and then be able to prove daily visitors and traffic.”

    no, sadly they still may not get it. i have a .com site ranked at the top of first page of google for the keyword term of the product a company is paying to advertise for in adwords. they did not seem to care that rather than pay every month over month in adwords advertising, they could own the developed site that got hundreds of monthly visitors searching the exact product, and by owning the domain/site you pay one time now and get that traffic organically, for free, indefinitely.

    as clear cut as this sounds the company was still not interested. i actually wrote a blog post about this, titled “You Can Lead An End-User To Water But ….” i think you can fill in the rest

  27. Peter,

    What is the most you would pay for DenverRealEstate.com today (no one can answer this question better)?

    I recently moved to a new city and I went to REALTOR.com and found a few listings of interest. Next, I called the listing agent for each home and met them in person. After meeting 3-4 agents I selected the agent that I liked the most. Honestly, this process never landed on a City+RealEstate.com domain.

  28. @ Tommy

    My wife and I have been checking out summer homes, and more importantly than the actual homes, we are interested in learning about the towns and areas. Because of this, most of our searches have focused simply on the town/city.

  29. We have quite a few realestate domains for sale, and I agree that the real estate agents don’t get it. One of the reasons, is they don’t understand the domain world, and many of them have “staff” look after their online presence.

    They don’t understand the business case about buying a realestate domain, but would spend several hundred of dollars a month in advertising in a newspaper or guide about their properties. The lead generation business is now all about the internet, younger people are very fluid and move often. They rely on the internet.

    I think if they understood that many of their clients use the internet to research realestate, they may change the way they do business.

    Barb

  30. Elliot great post, I have spent the last 10 year marketing websites and properties for real estate agents in Southern California and it just amazes me little the profession knows about marketing online. With 80%+ of all transactions starting online you’d think that they put 80% of their efforts and marketing budgets online. I had a client that I was trying to get to buy several cityhomes.com domains names. I think the cost was around 10K for four or five cities and they balked at the price. The brokers response was “10K for domain names that cost $10”. The thing that gets me is the same brokerage was spending 30-40K a month advertising in the LA Times every week.
    The agents that get it and put the effort into their website and capturing a large percentage of the inline business. Their loss is my gain I guess and I have been able to amass a pretty nice portfolio of city based real estate domain.
    As far as single property websites (ie 1234mainstreet.com) most agents only do them to wow the clients and typically they are only a slide show on a webpage not seo, no back links.
    @dcmike77
    NAR stats they cant use yourcityrealtor.com not yourcity.com, which in my opinion NAR would have a hard time enforcing because the rule only went into effect a couple of years ago and they are leaving enforcement up to the local board level which is inconsistent at best.
    @peter
    In my experience you are the 1% of agents and brokers that get the Internet and domain names. Congratulations on getting a good domain name, I hope that it is helping you with your marketing efforts.

  31. I guess I just hear the same old song and dance.

    John Doe owns a bunch of “real estate” (or whatever vertical) domains. I myself own a few “real estate” domains along with some quality “city” domains.

    John Doe has probably never sold a home, probably never created a lead generation site, probably never earned a real estate commission, probably never started a real estate brokerage, and probably never personally listed a home on Realtor.com, VRBO.com, or any of the other well established site.

    Maybe John Doe doesn’t get. Or maybe he does. Who knows?

    Is Peter killing the competition with his acquisition? I would love to know!!!

  32. Ironically, domain investing and development probably doesn’t have any closer parallel industry than real estate investment and development.

    There is truth to the generational gap and other factors mentioned. As a broker I can once again speak honestly and say that your typical real estate agent doesn’t even have a simple marketing plan and lacks the business savvy (and even sales skills) to be successful in most other endeavors. As in all things, there are certainly exceptions.

  33. As a domainer and website builder who is moving offline, I am going to give free seminars to business people, especially real estate agents and see if I can help them “get it.” Pay expenses and I’ll do one in your town.

    According to the NAR, 97% of home buyers start their search online. Take a minute to think about that. All the money, time and effort spent on yellow pages, newspaper, radio and billboard advertising, open houses, etc. accounts for only 3% of business.

    I intend to change that, at least in my local area.

    On another note, while reading these messages, I went to Godaddy and invested $7.07 for Scenic30ARealty.com Scenic 30A is an 18-mile road that hugs the coast line along the Gulf of Mexico on Florida’s Emerald Coast. It has 17 golf courses and 14 distinct upscale ($2,000,000 condos) beach communities.

    Now I intend to see if area real estate agents “get it.”

  34. No, they don’t get it. I was a real estate agent before I change my job to a new one and all my partners and other agents didn’t think about citydomains.com or other tlds because we mostly use the company website with our onw directory where we can list homes for sale and because URL was something like: http://www.realtor.com/yourname12334/ we mostly reg (they mostly tell me to do it as I was a domain savvy) their namefirstname.com but rarely cityrealestate.com or similar. Because a agent want to let customers that they are dealing with “who.com” rather than cityrealestate.com or homeforsaleciti.com…. on our business card we all have a domain like namefirstname.com (or namefirstnameagent.com….redirect to the long company url.
    I also reg hundred of cityrealestate.tld and none were interested when you suggest a price over $100 they even laught at me. So I finally sold all my domains to a domainer who never sold to a RE agent to date.
    Now here is a different thing, I also own a domain re(city).com witch have been developped and is so old that it’s ranked top 10 on Google for keyword city real estate
    I ask some realtors if they were interested as it’s top ranked and they could benefits from it, guess what, none I’m serious none were interested for only $500 I ask, I even told them that that price is a gift and $500 is nothing compare to ROI and adwords fees they pay, even they were not interested until I get 1 out of 100 I’ve contact (most of my old friends) who was intersted but he was leaving the real estate company and need this website in case of he wants to do a independant RE agent.
    I told so many time RE agents how they can benefits from a cool name, its easier to remember than thei name… but they don’t get it, just go out and seek for homes then take the agent business card and you’ll see something like JohnDoeRE.com or even worse.

  35. I do think of the NAR information and will continue to market using the internet to find leads and sell homes. I only hope other real estate agents do not get the big picture.

    I am often looking to buy good geo names for real estate.

  36. Most real estate agents frankly don’t get it. I have attempted to sell major Canadian city/openhouse, city/condo(s), neighbourhood/condo, dot com and dot ca – no takers, very rarely even a reply.

    In the end I think this is good. Nearly every drop is filled with these types of names in GTLD’s and CCTLD’s which adds value to my portfolio. Not to mention my wife is now studying to be a real estate agent. My domains should work well for her.

    However when I did sell my condo recently I chose shopcondo diddly com. Mostly because I was awed by the subdomain possibilities. The agent turned out to be average.

  37. It’s a slow education … but not for all of them. There are tech & marketing savvy realtors all over the internet. CityHomes.tld, CityRealEstate.tld, and CityCondos.tld are local “brands”, as well as logical, intuitive portals for local real estate.

    Some realtors know these domains lend instant credibility, or at least further enhance the cachet factor they’ve established over years of successes.

    Look at Audrey Ross of MiamiRealEstate.com, or LuxuryRealEstate.com. Premium generics make a statement.

  38. Most real estate agents will not spend the money to purchase a (city)realestate.com, pay to develop a great website design and not to mention the money needed for SEO and SEM to market the website. Otherwise, the URL will be the best kept secret. Unfortunately, the industry (NAR) pundits state, “less than 2% of all internet leads close”. IMO, the real estate websites that do exist, don’t have enough horsepower (organic and/or paid) behind them to be proven successful.

    http://www.DenverRealEstate.com has proven to be an incredible marketing tool for our real estate agents to compete against other brokerages to obtain the listing.

    • Peter & others:

      I definitely get it, and I agree that having the city name in a domain name is very important, as is having a couple of other real estate specific keywords in the domain name. I also own and track many locale specific real estate domain names in our market.

      But from what I see in the RE SERPs I monitor, the real key to good placement, and thereby a good number of leads, is the same thing that many non-RE websites have recognized: lots and lots of relevant, unique and quality content, including keyword rich sub-page urls and content that is very locale specific (for common long-tail real estate queries). It also needs to be constantly “fresh” in the eyes of the SEs. What Peter’s site has, and mine, is lots of SE readable and indexable property details for all of the local MLS listings, and lots of locale and property type specific pages, with the most recent listings being displayed on each locale specific sub-page. This means that nearly every day, the SEs will see new content (property listings) on those pages to be indexed.

      What most agents have on their websites is non-spiderable, and therefore non-indexable, IFramed listings content, which doesn’t help their ranking, no matter how powerful the domain name might be.

      Unfortunately, building this kind of powerful real estate website is not easy or cheap. It takes a huge investment in $$ for the non-technical agent or brokerage office, or, as in my case, since I also have a strong programming background, many hundreds of personal hours of software development and content building. Very few agents have the $$ or the technical skills to build a strong website that can compete in the SERPs with large and well established websites like ours, no matter what their domain name may be.

      So, it is not always that the agents “don’t get it”. They get it, but may already know that competing with some of the already powerful RE sites that dominate the SERPs in their market is beyond their financial and/or technical capabilities.

    • Keywords like … city name … real estate, open house, open houses, homes for sale, builders, custom builders, new homes, land for sale, commercial and even DenverCustomBuilders.com for a few google ads.

  39. @ Peter – Great looking website at Denver Real Estate.

    I agree that the name will help get the listing because everybody has the MLS and a IDX search. There is only one person/broker/agent that can own a city name real estate (dot) com.

  40. Hey El

    Are you secretly reading my blog? I hate to shame you this way into admitting it, but I covered this subject in great detail about two and half years ago. http://www.successclick.com/real-estate-agents-cant-find-domain-name-values_2007_12_04/

    I know what you’re thinking (“Nobody reads your blog, Stephen. So what’s your point?”)

    I didn’t have answers then, but I have some updates for everyone asking this question. Sadly, I’m going to have to deliver them here, because you’re so much cuter than me and everyone likes you better than me and if I put it on my blog nobody will see it. Geez.

    There are several reasons why real estate agents don’t “get it”.

    1) Most agents barely make any money, so trying to find the ones that do in the area of your geo-real estate domain is hard.

    2) The agents who make a lot of money at selling property — ummm… ever met one? I’m really not generalizing here, but the few top dog agents/brokers I’ve met were so amazed at themselves that if you offered up a new “marketing idea”, especially one they really don’t understand, you’d be talking to someone with a blank look in their eyes and a tepid smile across their lips (See “American Beauty”). They’re thinking “not an agent, and surely not as successful as me…”

    3) Most agents are with big real estate firms who provide them with their own free websites and listings, (mostly in subdomains or page links) and like most people today, they still don’t understand the value of “owning” the internet land that represents their prodservs.

    4) Strangely, the highest percentage of my clients have been Real Estate ATTORNEYS – but only few of them are actually buying real estate domains, they rest are more interested in the legal domains.

    Bottom line, you will need to reach the TOP of the corporate marketing ladder of a large real estate firm to convince them to buy the domains at their perceived value – which we all know shocks most people when they hear the number. Then you have to spend two weeks educating them… bah.

    I have about 20 nice real estate domains – I’ve had them for over five years, and in one instance, tried to market them in the local newspaper classifieds for that area, and the newspaper people said “sorry, we don’t take competitive ad links for real estate advertising!” WHAT?

    Finally, in one case, I had the exact domain name of a city subdivision, and a smart family-owned real estate company bought the domain and now points it straight to their website – which covers the area of the domain.

    For real estate domain buyers, you got to dig deep to find a buyer.

  41. RE: 2) Actually I did meet a real estate agent who made a lot of money at selling property. In his second year in the business, he developed a system which he used to sell 83 homes in 8 months, in a down market in Indiana. He then started his own firm.

    I am working at bringing his simple system into a form any agent can implement on their own. It consists of a seamless mesh of web page, PPC, squeeze page, voice mail, email and personal follow-up. The system and site are still under construction, so please file the information and check back periodically, assuming you can see the value of it. Or email me at 838System.org (at) gmail.com

  42. My opinion is that RE are in their business and don’t care so much about the world around them. It takes time and money to build and keep a website and they may think it is both a waste of time and money to buy a domain and create
    a(nother) site. Short view maybe.

  43. @Dennis

    “….. they may think it is both a waste of time and money to buy a domain and createa(nother) site.”

    Me, I’d just point a great generic to my existing site.
    But that’s just the domainer in me. 🙂

  44. What is the value of CityRealEstate (dot) com for a broker that might get it? Chicago, Nashville, Boston or Orlando

  45. As a Realtor that owns over 500 names I can say I get it. However you need to realize that many Internet leads are rarely the best. Most agents make very little money and yet spend a lot on marketing to make that little bit. So when you go pitching your new idea to them they just dont want to hear it. economy also sucks.

  46. @ Samir,

    500 domains! That’s an impressive portfolio for anyone that’s not a “domainer”. Do you have a list of those domains? Have you hired a domain consultant to help you utilize your domains to make you money? Just owning the domains doesn’t mean you’re going to make money. You have to know exactly how to use them to your advantage.

    Additionally, with 500 domains (about $4,200 annual cost), are their domains in your portfolio that should be deleted? Promoted? Built out? How are you using your domains? Linked to the proper page that is relevant to the domain?

    I am fairly confident you spend more than $5000 a year on advertising. You should spend about $1500 in domain consultation, and then learn how to spend LESS money for more profits based on your domains alone.

    Most of my clients are actually in the real estate business, although most are brokers and RE attorneys. I think I can help you really augment your domain assets.

    Other than that, I’m impressed you “got it”.

    (thanks Elliot)

  47. It would be interesting to link all the cityrealestate (dot) com together and see what might happen.

    I am a agent not a broker, but it all has a commission using the internet for leads using a CityRealEstate (dot) com.

  48. I disagree… Even one lead out of several hundred can definitely pay off the $4200 when you sell a home….

    I am a real estate broker and am looking to get into doing my business online.

  49. i too am learning about urls and specifically, exactmatch domain names & http://www.googlekeywordtool.com/ – if you own some great xxxrealestate.com/net/org xxxhomes.com/nte/org or great xxxhomesforsale.com/net/org domain names and you are a realtor – the best thing to do is use them to generate the leads yourself and then refer the leads out for a cut of the commisson – imho – this is my plan at least : )

  50. Plain and simple, realtors are tightwads. They just don’t get it about domains. For example, one lead from a town.com domain could lead to a 10k commission. Wouldn’t that justify paying $1k or more for a domain? I spelled it out many ways in pitch e-mails and phone conversations, but nobody ever stepped up to the plate not even for a trial.

  51. Well, it is not that real estate agents “don’t get it,” it is that people do not get it, in general. That said, it clears up a lot….. Lets not stop this train at the station just yet…. What about all small businesses?

    Also, someone posted above that $250,000 leads to $10,000 commission, does not know what they are talking about. If that person did understand the real estate business, he or she would know that it is much less. The maximum it “could be” (99%) of the time is $7,500 (or 3%), though you may see 6% commissions paid by the seller, but that is split to both sides of the transaction. Not to mention taxes, E&O insurance, marketing budget, Association dues, Gas, insurance, supplies, transaction fees, broker fees. Depending on the broker/agent split, this lovely $7,500 instantly turns into a range between $2,000 to $5,000, depending on the broker agent split and a million other factors, some of which are above. Hopefully that clears up some of the misconceptions about the “fantasy world” of commissions.

    Bottom Line, any website can be promoted to the top of the page in Google. It just takes work, there is no magic solution. This includes SEO, is focused more on content than anything else.

    -Keith

  52. “Bottom Line, any website can be promoted to the top of the page in Google. It just takes work, there is no magic solution. This includes SEO, is focused more on content than anything else.”

    You lost me there. it costs money to go to the top (and especially to stay there), but much less if you have the city name because people will link to city.com much more often and for free.

    Over time it saves a fortune in ads and SEO. It’s an investment, like getting an office in a busy intersection even if it costs more, expect you buy the name only once.

    The name makes much more sense for larger offices, not individual realtors.

  53. Most real estate agents fail to take advantage of the internet as a PR campaign channel and will rely on print ads in the local penny saver or direct mail advertising as a way to get their name in front of potential clients looking to sell their homes.

    This traditional process can prove to be unsuccessful as many people begin to move away from these types of advertisements and onto the internet for their research. Of course many real estate franchises off tools to their agents to promote themselves with realtor website templates and other marketing materials, but fail to realize these all look the same when the client is looking for an agent to list their home. Because of the template look and feel, each agent website looks like the other with the same color scheme, listings and no promotional content of the agent themselves.

    Incorporating PR techniques along with the standard template website can set the progressive realtor apart from the rest in the eyes of the prospect.

    3 Things that a PR campaign should include:

    1. Satisfied customer testimonials – As clients close on their homes, the agent should ask for a small sentence or two outlining their experience and satisfaction with the agent. Placing these testimonials on their website can provide some instant credibility to the agent and their ability to service the customer.

    2. Promotional video – A small 60 second PR video can be created in a professional studio for less than the cost of one direct mail campaign. Using an unbiased spokesman touting the agent’s strengths and experience can go a long way toward building an impression that can stay with the prospect for weeks or longer.

    3. Real Estate Newsletter – Creating an e-mail subscription campaign to distribute information about the real estate market will continue keeping the agent in front of potential buyers and sellers over time. The agent is more likely to be contacted when the time is right as they have built a rapport over time.

    Realtors need to do more than the traditional business card at the grocery store bulletin board to get new clients. Creating a PR campaign that creates a web funnel of prospects to your door is not as hard as it sounds and can cost a great deal less than the traditional marketing most agents are following.

    http://myprvideo.com/realtor-video.html

  54. They definatly dont get it….Most of them would rather have BuyHousesinCityNowforCheap.com rather than CityRealestate.com

    If i was a realestate agent it would be a no brainer..I think potentia hoembuyers would probaly remember CityRealEstate.com over BobbyJonesRealtyCity.com

    Or maybe its just me

  55. I am a Real Estate Broker in Canada and I find that real estate agents are slow to climb aboard the web 2.0/social media bandwagon. I have been to many social media seminars and sat on a couple of panels explaining the basics to new agents but very few are utilizing the tools such as blogging, domain names, etc. As a member of the Active Rain blogging platform I’ve learned how important hyper local content is to garner Google juice. Having domain names to compliment the hyper local content is the name of the game.

  56. @ Peter Obtaining DenverRealEstate.com and, most recently, DenverHomes.com shows a forward-looking strategy for your real estate brokerage. Well done!

    Fact is that most individual Realtors could not afford to buy these names. But, there is no doubt about the value of the investment. Those are the top ranking keywords for that market. They have the potential to become brand names in and of themselves. The value of domain is a worthy investment in and of itself. But, when coupled with a User Friendly website that generates and distributes lead effectively, those domains are goldmines.

    Individual Realtors like myself have to settle to buy key word rich domains that are affordable such as http://www.AllDenverRealEstate.com. But, the progressive brokerages are in a better position to position themselves with keyword branding through acquiring the “golden” domain names.

  57. Just as a nice guy, and luring Elliot into my website to try to sell his domains, I own “ColoradoReservations.com”. Sweeeet!

    $350 by paypal, its yours.

    Come El, put up some of your domains on my site, I’ll give you a free post… my readers are hungry for purchases. Like big white sharks!!

  58. @ Denver Realtor – I would agree with keyword real estate names, but it takes time to develop. I have some traffic on DenverCustomBuilders.com and make some PPC income, but it needs more work.

  59. I don’t think geographical domain names are always absolutely needed. As long as the site contains good keywords and seo is taken seriously. There are great ways to bypass the need for geo domains.

  60. What would you like to own … ChicagoRealEstate.com or NoNameRealEstate.com. I would buy ChicagoRealEstate.com every time.

    @Derek – They might not be needed, but they sure help.

  61. http://www.zoominfo.com/CachedPage/?archive_id=0&page_id=78100259&page_url=//www.rollerblading.com/private/ceoprofile.html&page_last_updated=2003-07-27T15:21:53&firstName=Ray&lastName=Redican

    Personal Profile

    wpeB.jpg (33942 bytes)

    Ray Redican jr. (CIS) life story and front page newspaper article appearing 7/7/97. From age 13-21yrs. LowellSun in color

    Full Story
    Admin@Foxwood.com
    Anthony G. Ziagos CEO The Merrimack Journal Newspaper group and Middlesex Properties. Acted on my behalf flying to Nevada to meet investors to sell municipality domain for Redican for $20 million dollar. See Contract

    Ray Redican jr. (CIS) and Mr. Ziagos have partnered in print media and community web site marketing. Dracut.com (CIS) Tyngsboro(ugh).com (CIS) Merrimack Journal Redican’s grandfather had a boook published before his passing.

    Redican and Marisa Camara New citizen from Azores Portugal and Redican’s Community College first business partner (27012 bytes)

    Ray Redican jr. (CIS) and Marisa Camara posing for newspaper photo shoot. Appearing Dracut Dispatch and

    Marisa was Rays first business partner and one of redican’s FINANCIER putting in close to $148K

    Boston Prints (89725 bytes)
    Ray Redican posing for photo after finishing designing clients web site billed out at $125 – $375 an hour depending on how many guys we needed to code.

    Mr. Redican founded Commonwealth Internet Services (CIS) which has a strong presence throughout the United States and abroad.

    The Center for Business and Not for profit Organization’s (CBNO) was created before CIS.

    wpeE.jpg (48275 bytes)

    Posing before going to Cambodian (Asian) New Year Party

    Lowell Sun Front Page Story (28798 bytes)

    News Paper Photo

    Chairman CEO CIS Sports Group (CIS)/ RollerBlading.com (CIS)
    Revenue: Positive
    Trade Exchanges implemented B2C B2G B2G
    Affiliate Programs
    Yellow Pages
    Targeted Advertising Infrastructure Needed
    Skatepark buildout/partnership
    Personal trainers
    Portal deals Funding

    Resume
    RollerBlading.com (CIS) Business Plan http://rollerblading.com/umledu/

    1997 – 2000 RollerBlading.com (CIS)’s transactions we predict will continue to grow. Traffic has increased during marketing campaigns and our relations with AOL Time Warner are strong. We seek our next round of funding so as to push ahead until the point of inflection is identified. Averege user profiles submitted daily in excess of 2,000 (two thousand). Over the past three (3) years we have over 2 million profiles of users and most have created their own pages from the code guy that that girl knew. he hooked us up with a /YourPage code and I tweaked it.

    Feb. 3, 2003 That was then this is now 2003. Most people who visit this web site seem to be children. Statistics are stored although they not been used in any other statistical calculations. Since we think that most of our members that have signed up to join this web site through our Subscription Service are children they therefore are not going to have credit cards. We need to sell more products to persons that are able to transact online.

    There is an adult population that have signed up through our Subscription Service. The most yeared individual was in His 70’s.

    Products are continuing to be sold through this web site there just needs to be more business capabilities. I have all these people coming to the website and everyone I know is stupid. I’m responsible personally for my own money put in close to $300,000. The million dollar per month contract I did with Corey Wit Pre Aol Merger I got for a steal. He really hooked me up.

    Feb. 4, 2003 This page may not be updated for a few months. Going forward contact Ray Redican at admin@foxwood.com 978 458-7625

    Feb. 3, 2003 Update: CBNO was sued by Benneton Spa Italy’s parent company in charge of Rollerblade Inc. USA. CBNO was compelled to arbitrate at the United Nations in Geneva Switzerland at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). CBNO requested a three member panel that consisted of international lawyers. Two lawyers are from the USA while the remaining panelist is from France. CBNO enjoyed a unanimous no decent ruling. Go to http://www.wipo.int/ and search CBNO to find the appropriate case number if you so wish.

    Ray Redican jr. (CIS)
    RollerBlading.com (CIS)
    CIS Sports Group (CIS)
    Commonwealth Internet Services (CIS)
    Admin@Foxwood.com
    978 458-7625

    PO BOX 7381
    Lowell, MA 01852 US
    Resume Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of eBusiness Management Professor Ken Morse MIT 50K Class of 2000.

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