Real Estate: Online Listing Aggregators

Has anyone noticed that more and more real estate websites are launching every day? Yahoo Real Estate, Zillow, Trulia, Homescape and now even Google Base are getting in the game to provide home buyers with a comprehensive online search destination. And that is just scratching the surface. All of these real estate portals receive incredible amounts of traffic from home buyers searching across the country every day. Even with the market slowdown, the buyer traffic is increasing - the need is there. These real estate search engines are popping up left and right to accommodate the searching public.

Where should I list online?

Now, this raises a tricky question - if you are a real estate professional or a new home builder or even Mr. Home Owner and you need to tell the world about your home listing(s), how do you choose which real estate portal to list on, or more importantly, how can you put your home information on ALL of those websites without spending every minute of an entire month inputting the information? It would take forever!

A is for Aggregators!

Well, that is where the home listing aggregators come in. The simple answer to your predicament is that you can let someone else do it for you. Real estate listings aggregators are fairly new to the industry and becoming increasingly popular as more individuals and companies are seeing the returnable results of a mass internet marketing campaign. A few of the more popular real estate aggregators are Hotpads, Oodle, SubmitYourListings and Point2NLS which were created with real estate agents and home owners in mind. BHI and Builderfeeds.com are two of the few home listings aggregators designed specifically for new home builders, however, Builderfeeds can still accommodate real estate professionals and home owners, as well.

A note on New Home Builders

Up until recently, new home builders have had to rely on expensive print advertising, billboards, direct mail, word of mouth and foot traffic - all of these fairly local marketing endeavors. A few have spent the time and money to improve the popularity of their own websites, but they are coming to realize that their website will never be the number one online resource for new home buyers. Now, finally there is an opportunity to publish their new home listings to multiple real estate search engines without hiring a team of IT professionals. BHI and Builderfeeds.com have paved the way.

What the aggregators do for you

This is how it works. These companies have the technology to pull your home listing data from either your own website, or a static source like an Excel file, and format the listing information in such a way that they can broadcast it to multiple real estate search engines, meeting each and every format requirement. This includes the property description, address, photos, contact info and usually a website link. Some of them, like Builderfeeds, offer even more enhancements with translation services, video, virtual tours and international promotion.

How to choose the right listing aggregator for you

Some of them require that you know how to create your own XML feed and others do it for you. Depending on your technological expertise, and how much time you have, you may want to do some research on which company is the best fit for your particular need. Each of them have different cost structures and different registration requirements, so you may want to find this out before you join. I would recommend that you choose 4 or 5 aggregators to research and then call or email these questions, as applicable, to their customer service:

Is there a cost to register?
Where will you publish my listing(s)? How many sites?
How much monthly traffic do those sites receive, collectively?
Are any of those sites international?
Can you translate my listings into other languages?
Will you provide me with tracking reports?
How/in what format do I submit my listing information?
How/in what format do I submit bulk listing information?
Do I need to have my listing information on another website?
Will your team need access to the back end of my website?
Can I submit bulk listings without a website?
Can I submit bulk listings without creating my own XML feed?
What is the cost? Per listing? Per community? Per added feature?
How often can I update my listing information?
How long is my contract?

Once you have all your questions answered, you can quickly compare your options, side by side and figure out which service provider is right for you.

What is the cost?

The fees are usual very minimal in comparison to the value of selling your listings, and therefore a very smart investment for anyone trying to sell real estate these days. Some of the sites offer to promote your services for free, and then charge extra fees for additional features, like video or mapping. Whereas others charge a flat fee per listing or community and everything comes standard.

For more information, you can visit one of the websites mentioned in this article and get started today!