Just was wondering what your thoughts where on House.com and their sister sites for lead generation. I did search the forum for some details but I was not able to find some... so here is my post

I would never use them.

Their sales tactics are horrible.

They called me one day and said, "how do you expect to get business if you aren't on house.com?" "Your listings aren't even on Yahoo" (which by the way, they are), "Don't you want to be like (insert name of agent I have never heard of), she's very sucessful from using house.com"

They pretty much told me how stupid I was for not being a part of house.com

I haven't used house.com since they were free (back in maybe 1997-1998)

I won't do business with a company that tries to bully me into doing business with them. Instead of telling me what they could do for me, they explained all the reasons I was dumb for not signing up with them yet..

probably more reasons than "house.com" that makes that agent a success...they forget to tell you what else shes doing to work her business...
Very few lead generation sites out there worth anything...especially if they want a load of money up front. I tell them if they are that confident in their site why do they need upfront money?

Most of those lead generation sites = loss of money for you for worthless leads.

save your money.

Thank you for the input and you are now exactly confirming what I have thought about them……and late last night they confirmed this for me also.

You guy’s are great, thank you!!!

12//13/2007 late night update:
They where able to talk to me (used a different number). I told them that I was going to talk to other agents about their experience with House.com; the person I talked to go very huffy and puffy…..and told me that he does not work with “tire kickers” and he guesses he is” not doing a good job”……

I will use this line the next time they get in touch with me....I like this line!!!

I know that there are much better ways to generate leads than to just simply purchase them.

Search for them at http://www.TheRipOffReport.com and see the experiences that others describe in their reports. I don't know if its them, but someone has been calling me claiming to be looking for an agent to help a number of people looking to buy in the area.

Bettina, here's a followup response to a similar question at
http://www.agentsonline.net/forums/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Number/187263#Post187263

I'd avoid spending any money on leads without having someway to turn them to clients. My research on house.com found that they receive approximately 35,000 unique visitors a month. Compare to my favorite lead generator Homegain.com which receives 3 million unique a month. Any lead is better than no lead when you pay close attention to lead guarantee/accuracy and conversion.

Below is a company with 1 million+ unique visitors a month and generated only $15,000 in monthly revenue. They managed to spend $10 million a year to drive traffic to their site.
This week the company shuts down and announces plan to auction off its assets.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/12/06/edgeio-to-shut-down-in-the-deadpool

As these companies continue to improve their sales tactics/ conversion techniques on you and I, lead buyers ( that's us )
should work on our conversion and sales tactics...or we'll end up spending $10 million to drive people to our sites for no return.

Many agents today despise lead generators but the idea of "leads" itself does not cause failure. The real causes include

fake leads
poor response time
cold leads ( those looking to take action 6-18 months from now )
agent inability to convert

Many agents tend to focus on problems caused by bogus leads however the other three are even more costly.

I hope this helps a little.

Learn SEO with your own website and develop a relationship with your own sphere of influence and you won't have to pay for leads. But don't get suckered by website companies that say they will get you to the top of the search engines. They always want way to much $ for that. Their slick ads and websites make it sound like you won't lose, but you will. If they were so confident in their business you should only have to pay them anything when a deal closes. As long as they are licensed to do that.

Thank you so much for the great input..again..wow...you guy's are great!!! Thank you!!!