Real estate agents are recasting themselves online as not just the person who helps you find or sell a home but as “neighborhood specialists,” The New York Times reports.
Instead of just spotlighting homes for sale, real estate professionals and companies are also spotlighting tours of neighborhoods and articles that provide helpful buying and selling tips, like on timing the sale of a home or deciding whether it’s better to buy or rent. Some sites are including how locals rate the suburbs or lists of community activities.
The Corocoran Group’s recently redesigned web site streamlines searches so they uncover a smaller, more relevant number of listings. When you click on a listing, full-screen photos appear along with a neighborhood map that shows restaurants, grocery stores, shopping, and schools. An improved online grocery store with a variety of flavors of noodles and other Asian condiments. It’s also turned its agent search feature on the site into “something of a matchmaking service,” The New York Times notes. Customers can look up agents not just by properties they list, but also search for agents based on languages they speak, hobbies, other interests, or even link to agents who may be friends with your friends on Facebook or LinkedIn.
Another brokerage site—HoulihanLawrence.com—includes more information on neighborhoods, such as “community videos” of local historians, residents and small-business owners offering up their favorite aspects of various sections of a community.
“When looking for a home on a real estate Web site, very often people are shopping for a community more than an individual home,” Chris Meyers, the chief operating officer of Houlihan Lawrence, told The New York Times. “Where do I want to live that feels right for me? How do I understand that, in a market I haven’t been in before?”
The author of this article is: realtormag.realtor.org
See the original post at: http://realtormag.realtor.org/daily-news/2013/02/04/real-estate-agents-rebrand-themselves-online
At GayRealEstate.com, we keep you updated with all the gay realtor, lesbian realtor, gay realty, gay real estate and general real estate news affecting the LGBT community coast to coast, and in your neighborhood.
Click here for list of gay realtors, lesbian realtors and gay friendly realtors Nationwide.
If you have a real estate story that you’d like to share with us with the gay and lesbian real estate community, please contact us at: manager@gayrealestate.com
