By Susanne Dwyer
How Homes.com Keeps Agents at the Center of the Real Estate Transaction
Editor’s Note: The following is the cover story in the November issue of RISMedia’s real estate magazine.
As other real estate portals focus on scaling and capturing more consumer traffic, Homes.com is focused on meeting the needs of the industry.
The company isn’t worrying about attracting tens of millions of eyeballs to its website. It has a vision that’s much more focused: to be a trusted friend of the industry while driving quality consumers to their advertisers.
Gaining—and keeping—credibility with brokers and agents can be challenging when competitors introduce features that can cut real estate agents out of the process completely. It’s no wonder there’s a certain amount of skepticism and fear among agents who are forced to pay to get leads back on their own listings.
But there’s no confusion about Homes.com’s motives.
Since its inception in 1992, Homes.com has connected buyers and sellers with professional real estate agents. It also offers direct exposure for agents’ listings without a pay-to-play expectation.
And that means directing all leads—whether a listing agent pays for marketing on Homes.com or not—back to that listing agent for each and every listing displayed on its site, says Homes.com President David Mele.
“Our business model is different; we want to be the broker partner portal that brokers can trust to not compete with them for business,” Mele says. “We’re not growing our brand at their expense.”
When brokers decide whether to advertise on portals with more than 100 million monthly views, it becomes a matter of diminishing returns, he points out.
“If you’re paying money to market your listings on a site with that many visitors, it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack to find the right buyers.”
With more than 400 employees spread among its headquarters in Norfolk, Va., and three other offices in Florida and California, Homes.com is growing at a measured pace.
Its focus on pursuing “transaction-ready consumers” instead of more passive shoppers makes Homes.com’s value impossible to discount, Mele says.
“Our core clients are real estate brokers and agents; we want them to trust us,” Mele says. “That’s why we have no plans to get into the real estate brokerage or sales business, and we’re up front about that.”
Keeping Agents at the Center of the Transaction
With a clearly defined business model that avoids stepping into the murky waters of real estate brokerage sales, Homes.com wants agents to know leads on their listings will always go to them. Simple concept, right?
But that’s a challenge to communicate when bigger portals blur those lines, says Andy Woolley, vice president of industry development at Homes.com.
“Unless you pay to advertise on some of those sites, you won’t get the leads on your listings,” Woolley says. “Many brokers don’t realize that.”
Brokers and agents who want the highest return for their advertising dollars should ask these three key questions before agreeing to advertise on search portals:
- Do I always get free leads on all of my listings?
Don’t assume. “Some of the largest real estate portals don’t always do
From:: Real Estate News
