Real estate site help, need some brainstorming!

I'm creating a real estate site. And I'm going to let agents add some of their listings, so I can have a map with some listings on it.
Now I'm doing this locally, and I'm debating actually getting my real estate license and using the site as a lead generator for me.
So here's my issue, when I have agents posting their own listings, I obviously want to have the brokers name, agent listing, etc...
but by doing so, I'm possibly losing a lead, with the visitor simply contacting the real estate agent themself, and I'd get cut out of
being the middleman to the listing agent. They may have a real estate agent already, which would make me irrelevant, but if they
didn't have an agent, I'd end up being their agent, and getting my cut.

I was thinking of a contact form that goes to me, instead of the agents info, but a) agents might be discouraged from posting listings
if I don't add their personal infor for the listing, b) if I use the form to generate my own leads, some people may already have an agent
and be like, "I don't need you as a realtor, I just want the contact info for that damn house I was looking at."

Any ideas? I need some creative thinking!
Thanks.

your a few years behind bro. no matter what state your in, or who builds your site, it will have mls integration, so by default you will have every listing on your site already. it will post the listing agents name, but yours will be dominate and most buyers are ignorant of the relationships of the parties and just assume it's yours cause it's on your site. you will never get a non-commercial broker to input a listing on your site, maybe a fsbo cause all listed properties are syndicated and have been for 10 years.

edit: if you could use your blackhatness to incorporate a site like foreclosureradar into your site (if they are still around), or a similar service - that would have value. it's considered premium information, used to be expensive. no one is going to buy the properties on the site but you'll establish rapport, and if you can indorporate loopnet - that would be hot shit.

Well that's one of my issues. Not being an agent yet, I can't list the sites with MLS.
So what I am doing is making the site looking like a regular real estate site, not owned by an agent or anything.
I want to rank it high, get a lot of traffic, and show agents the benefits of posting their ads manually.
And if/when I become an agent, it won't be a blatant promotion of myself, more so subtly, not discouraging agents from
posting their listings still. more so look like I'm an advertiser of the site, not the owner promoting myself.

Develop two sites: The first one would offer reviews of real estate
agents in your local area. The second would be your own real estate
site listing properties, etc.

Leave positive reviews for the second site on the first one. Promote both.
Market the first site to real estate agents. Drive hot leads to your own site.
If the lead doesn't pan out, drive it to the first one.

Maybe you already know this but what you might want to do is to become a Bird Dog in Real Estate.

Many investor's clubs, private investors are looking for people to bring in good deals because they don't have the time skills or they'r simply lazy to do it themselves.

My 2 cents on it, do the reverse process, instead of trying to sell what's already on the market, find new property's, get them the leads they want.

You'll be able to make more money doing this than the % in commissions PLUS in many states you don't need a Real Estate license (Considering you'r in US).

Hope this helps.

Cheers

Thanks for the replies and thoughts.
Any more ideas pertaining to my original post?
Thanks.

You can make paid listing on the site, charge them for reasonable amount for the year listing, you even can make packages starting from 5 listing month up to unlimited. They use your visitors to get leads you getting money from listing and other advertising, ppl contact real estate agent with best offer, all happy))

Local real estate is clique'ish, I would not risk doing anything underhand with leads or anything like that, once the word gets out (and it always does) - it's a hassle.

I agree with meikibay, the money is in purchasing, getting leads for investors like red hot live "need to sell my house tomorrow for a rock of crack leads are the best" = big money.

Have you tried building your own back-end lead generation system?

Incoming leads -> your database -> gets sent to real estate agents (with half-information) with ability to purchase the lead option for $xx -> after purchase, send them the full information

mugdug said:

Local real estate is clique'ish, I would not risk doing anything underhand with leads or anything like that, once the word gets out (and it always does) - it's a hassle.

I agree with meikibay, the money is in purchasing, getting leads for investors like red hot live "need to sell my house tomorrow for a rock of crack leads are the best" = big money.

Click to expand...

Thing is, our market is hot here, houses go in a day any way.

stanleyreporb said:

Have you tried building your own back-end lead generation system?

Incoming leads -> your database -> gets sent to real estate agents (with half-information) with ability to purchase the lead option for $xx -> after purchase, send them the full information

Click to expand...

That's kinda what I'm thinking, atleast to start, and if it's profitable, I'll get my own license and take the leads myself.
But that's why I'm hesitant of putting realtor's contact info on listings, I'll lose the leads and they'll go direct to the agent..

You can make paid listing on the site, charge them for reasonable amount for the year listing, you even can make packages starting from 5 listing month up to unlimited. They use your visitors to get leads you getting money from listing and other advertising, ppl contact real estate agent with best offer, all happy))

Click to expand...

I was thinking about that too, but I think it would be hard to start off charging them to list when the database is empty. I need it to look popular and make them want to do it. I guess if I'm hihgly ranked, they'll want to, where there's little listings or a lot.

Scrap it all, make two websites, one has an input form for people to input the exact type of home they are looking to buy, the other has a simple tick off list of that realtors can go to and "quick list" a home. Simple inputs such as a sq/ft range, bed/bath, price, zip code, etc.... What you want to accomplish is getting the simple info on the home for sale from the realtor.

On the consumer site you are telling them to sign up for FREE SMS alerts of the exact homes they are looking for in their area. They tick off the boxes, etc... everytime you have a home come into the realtor site, you load them in your desktop SMS platform and blast them out. You can advertise on the realtor site that you have an op-in list of XX,XXX number of buyers looking to purchase homes in the area.... on the consumer side you can let them know they will have first alerts sent to them.... Charge the realtor on a subscription basis to do the blasts. When the realtor inputs the info it can return a message like, "329 buyers match your criteria, to SMS them about your listing please click confirm" it will take them to a purchase page and charge them whatever you want.. $1 per text, 50 cents per text, etc. It literally costs you pennies to send a text through, so connecting the database and making them talk will be the toughest part.

A lot of front end website work, but connecting the two, using SMS, and charging the agent to send an SMS directly from your platform regarding the listing. In the meantime, like once a month, shoot out a mobile amazon link to a home buying manual to your prospective buyers... pick up an extra couple bucks, Haha.

Pretty slick idea.
The only thing is, unless I'm getting thousands of visitors per day, the SMS list really won't be too big.
I mean I'd probably only get a handful of signups per day. Then the variation of each person's desired house will probably only give me a few per search group, ie bungalow, three bedroom, garage, pool, etc. Not to mention the specific area they want to live in. And if someone buys a house in a few weeks or a month, they'll be removed from the list as well. So it would never really be a growing list.

I like this general idea though. There's gotta be a way for me to do parts of it and make it work.

I wonder if I could scrape MLS listings and post them on my own site.
I wonder if they would care/notice? I guess they probably eventually would.
But it's not like I'm doing anything bad, I'm doing good if anything, promoting house listings.
Thoughts?

bump!

jon_xx_x said:

That's kinda what I'm thinking, atleast to start, and if it's profitable, I'll get my own license and take the leads myself.
But that's why I'm hesitant of putting realtor's contact info on listings, I'll lose the leads and they'll go direct to the agent..

Click to expand...

Well, then start building your back-end

You don't need to put realtor contact info anywhere on your website. You just need a lead generation / contact form to be able to get leads.

Here's what I have in mind:-
Separate your real estate categories into multiple sub-categories (e.g: 2 room apartments, 5 bedroom houses, beach houses, etc) and in each sub-category, place a lead generation/contact form right below it.

Collect leads -> sell them to the real estate agents

Well, since this is in the blackhat SEO section, I would give a blackhat advice.

Share other agent's info on the website like agentx***x@g****.com and provide a link to contact them directly using a form.
And put your email in the backend to receive all the replies, if you find the deal worthy, take it and if not, forward it to the agent.

Dirty. I kinda like it!
Could be damaging if caught though!

Very good point I was going to suggest that. A lot of websites that want to stay as the middlemen do that. a lot go as far as to censor contact info in pms

Within minutes of a listing being entered in the MLS it is pushed out to every real estate site on the web via IDX. Most broker sites get traffic from their sphere of influence some get traffic from SEO, but for the generic search terms like "homes for sale in dallas" it will be really hard to rank against the big sites. As for scraping data from the MLS it's highly unlikely anyone will notice, if anyone does it will probably be an agent with one listing that doesn't like it being on your site and complains about it. You then might get a C&D from the local board of realtors if he figures out the right person to call.

As for displaying the agent info if you look carefully (it's hard to find sometimes) you will find it is on every IDX compliant site. It's buried though, the way the sites make money is selling leads to agent, like you plan, or if it's a brokers site then they want the buyer to contact them instead, much like you are planning. Agents will pay you a few bucks for these leads, but most experience agents hve been burned paying for bad internet leads and won't touch them. To get a good agent you will need to take a percentage of the commission at closing, and to do that you need to be licensed.

If you can generate decent quality seller leads agents will fall all over themselves offering you sexual favors to get those.

One last thing I see as a potential issue, if you are scraping data be careful about your source. I read a recent report that 68% of the homes listed on zillow were actually not on the market. They get away with it because they are huge, if you are a small site with inaccurate data then no one will come back and with most buyers starting their home search six months before they actually buy you will need a site that keeps them around.

Thanks for the reply.
I seen a broker site, forget the name, but they're doing adwords now. And they are trying to acquire and sell leads. They're advertising for "realtor xxxcity", and hoping the visitor signs up. I looked into it more and they take 25% commission off the sale, which is pretty damn smart, better than selling a lead for $10, I'm sure. I was trying to find out how they can keep the realtor honest though, and they never replied back to me lol. I wonder if they simply follow up with the lead six months down the road and see if they bought a house through the recommended realtor.

I have a couple realtor friends who are realtors, so I could trust them if I did the 25% thing. $1000+ per sale would be pretty sweet. If I could even get a couple per month, that's not bad for little work on my part. Only down side is, that $1000 for 25% could be $4000 for 100% if I was the realtor.