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Yes, it’s a good idea most of the time, but if it doesn’t fit your lead generation strategy, you don’t need to own your own personal website as a real estate agent. Similarly, if you are new to the business, there are better things to do than invest large sums in the creation of a website which will have to be redone anyway when you have grown a little.

Don’t expect to get a great website for less then 5.000€ , at the beginning, save that money for customer care and run your real esrate business without a website. Discover how you can be digitally efficient without a website.

In a nutshell, you don’t need a website to do the work of collecting and editing the complete file before the property was put up for sale. Files are generally processed within a month. Nor is it essential to have a website to spend time discussing each client’s very specific project. Nor is it essential to have a website to call customers directly with good news.

Publish your ad!

However, future buyers/tenants will have no trouble “registering” with a real estate agent for this service. And this is the basis of this beautiful profession. Focus on your customer experience with you or in front of the property.

You have certainly heard this phrase repeated over and over again.
You must have a website!

And while that’s not bad advice, most agents who give advice probably don’t know what they’re talking about.
The reality is-you don’t have to have a website to be a successful realtor. Most real estate transactions are based on referrals, and some of the most successful agents generate leads from referrals only. It is still possible to build a business offline.

“Sell faster… do (x) yourself and don’t waste a second to publish your ads on the media with (x)”. This is the good word pitched to real estate agents non-stop by most marketing service providers in the real estate industry.

5 Reasons realtors DON’T need a personal website

– Your real estate listing ad sites have a website,

There are benefits to having a separate website from advertising. If you change advertising provider, you keep your site. You can control and customize the back-end. You manage it yourself and you are the decision maker. However, real estate listing sites can have very powerful technology to do what you need to do. These are called real estate platforms such as Immoweb and Vlan immo, etc. Many of them have agent subdomains in addition to the main site page. This means you can have your own little website inside the website.
Having your own site can be relatively expensive on its own, especially if it comes with multiple features. Why spend time and money on what you already have?

– Most realtors don’t get any leads from personal websites, running real estate with or without website

A typical real estate expert will always win business from regular clients and referrals, not online leads. 20% of leads come from repeat businesses and referrals. Buyers and sellers work with people they trust. They trust their friends and family more than any other source. Recommendations from friends are always at the top of my # 1 search results for “super brokers”. Therefore, your website will not appear in this search result. If you’re not tech savvy but like people, focus on your referral business. Most people who visit your personal page come from a real estate site, are in front of your business, or are in front of the real estate you are selling or renting. They come to your website because they want to know more about what they see in front of them. You better invest in a QR code or NFC solution and take them directly to the right property they want to know more about.

– Because you’re not gonna outcompete them

In fact, SEO, short for “search engine optimization,” is the main reason for owning and building your own website. Unlike paid leads on Realtor.com, SEO leads are free. When a buyer types in “agent in [your city],” your website will show up in organic (i.e. free) search results. Click, connect or call and voila! You haven’t spent a penny!
That’s wonderful! And you can: SEO works! But only if you’re ready to take your website very seriously. There are agents who do it successfully. There are websites that rank and drive organic traffic. But not a lot!
There are only 10 placements on the first page of Google search results. Immoweb, Vlan immo or Realtor.com will win at least three places. This means that for local agents, it can go up to 7 places. (How many competitors do you have in your city alone?) Are you at least ready to create a website that ranks in the top 7 in your market? If not, don’t plan or wait for organic Google Leads. SEO is distracting.

– There Are Substitutes for Websites

Facebook is pretty serious about making itself a viable business platform, and Facebook’s business pages are themselves mini-websites. It also has the ability to serve lead ads on Facebook, which is basically the landing page. Visitors can enter their contact information in the Messenger Read Capture form, just as they would on their website. If you get leads from referrals, or direct mail, for example, your website may not be that important. Facebook business pages may work!

Similarly, if you’re running paid ads but don’t have a website, you can use a landing page service like the one offered by Ma Balise Nearby Platform to duplicate some of your website’s functionality. Even mainstream websites tend to feel like landing pages, and your website doesn’t feel strange at all.

You don’t need a website if you’re applying NFC tags or QR codes to your advertising sign in front of each property you’re managing. The Ma Balise Nearby Platform has a canva that allow you to create a dedicated landing page related to this particular property where you can easily drop your contact details. This way your customers can directly get in touch with you when in front of the desired property. By using a dedicated landing page for these realty, it will look more professional.

On top of this, creating and completing your Google MyBusiness page will for sure bring you more leads and contacts then a website

– You Aren’t Going to Use it Anyway

There are many things a website can do for you. But if you don’t spend the work and time to make them happen, they’re not good. Creating and publishing a single blog post can take at least a few hours. Is it the highest and best use of your time? Don’t let your website distract you from your money-making activities. If you’re focused on commercial investment, door knocks, direct mail, open houses, or just working in your area, your time may be better suited for these roles.

Technology is in perpetual evolution. Today, the SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) world is fabulous if you know exactly how to deal with it.. What if the first page of Google shows only 1 result instead of 10 results?
There are many unknowns, and expecting to catch up with these changes and trends demands a lot of time and efforts for pretty nothing as a result. Specially if you’re a minor realtor trying to compeat on SEO with the big realtors groups.
Weak websites become more and more marginalized over time.

Conclusion

As you saw it, there’re many thing to de before setting up a website. There’s lots of alternative to spending a bounch of money on building a website. A presence and optimisation on Social networks coupled with ads will bring you a larger return then a website. Helping the customer when in front of your sign is more important, and having the right page available on a tap is essential at that time.

Most of the time, you want to exceed customer expectations. And this is precisely what you can do by betting on Landing Pages (Mini Website). That is to say one website per property, which therefore do not necessarily communicate with each other, and on which is everything the prospective buyer/tenant needs to make his decision, alone or with the good advice of his entourage. Virtual tour, home staging, pictures, plan, summary of condominium fees, work quotes, etc.
To create these Landing Pages, Ma Balise provides a canvas specially dedicated to real estate ads, easy to use and customizable. Test directly for free!

Contact us for more details