Third Party Real Estate Sites

I have been working in real estate for all of 2 months...I went to school in 2005 to become a real estate agent and somehow on that path I ended up here. JK Realty doing the website, social media, print, etc...you kinda get the picture...I will tell you what I have come to as my conclusion about the real estate industry...you ready for this...wait for it...CHAOS!!!


Yep CHAOS I see people build elaborate websites with no SEO, print media, agents claiming homes that are not their listings and that's just the start of it. In the end the goal is to get your listing out to the public and convert that into a sale... capitalism at its best...I will say that the trending I see is in the third party websites like Trulia, Zillow, Yahoo and more.
These websites have more bells and whistles than most Italian sports cars, with the search features, online appraisals, maps, schools, how many dogs are in a square mile and how often people visit the park between 1 and 2 on a Sunday afternoon (I may have exaggerated a little) but the advantages of these websites are there massive SEO power. With the volume of hits and searches daily these websites have taken over form the standard basic realty websites for searches.

Why do I think this has happened? The IDX that is used by most realtors from MLS is hard to navigate, search, and its ugly. Yes ugly and try to parse the code and see what happens when they find out you have been digging in their code…fun times. Not with the Gigantic 3rd party websites have great searches, with maps and 8 X 10 glossy pictures with a paragraph on the back explaining each picture…(lets see who gets that) everything is at your fingertips on most of these websites except for the proper listing agent. You will normally have 1 to 4 agents listed and they are normally “Experts” in that area. In order to be an Expert you need to pay a set amount for a certain area to be an “Expert”, I am not sure I would pick a doctor to treat me this way…

At the end of the day the 3rd party superstore websites have their purpose because they have access to all the data they can get except for the listing agents and the basics of the house that is listed. There is no number to call to find out more information (unless you use the expert who will pull it up and say yes I can help you with that property) I would suggest this, use those huge websites to find what you’re looking for and then find the actual listing agent for that website and contact them directly about the said property. I will wager that the listing agent is pretty much an expert (with this property) they know the owner, Bank or HUD agency that has the property not to mention that they are the listing agent. They did the leg work, they know the details, they know the history and they know the property.
I am just sayin at the end of the day its chaotic finding a home/selling a home why not have an expert in your corner helping you out because it’s not like you’re buying a bag of chips and 12 pack of beer here. This is where you will sleep, shower, get dressed, have children, pets, mow your yard and the basic things that make your life and that to me is personal. But hey it’s your life and you can shop at the mega store of your local grocery store.

Written by Jori Husar web everything and marketing at JK Realty LLC.