First the question then the rant...
Do you get leads from enhanced listings on Realtor.com and how much did it cost you to re-up this year?
This was the first year in the past three or four that we did not enhance our listings, due to costs and value.
We only receieved 3 leads last year from Realtor.com (we generally have 15-30 listings)
They wanted 2k this year for me to re-up, so I told them no! Previously .com had based it on end of year inventory, now they are basing it on average inventory.
My bigger issue, is I can pay $25 for a virtual tour .com link per listing and I can choose which listings featured.
On top of this issue, is the biggest.
IDX feeds feature all the pictures and info for the listings, why hasn't realtor.com come around yet?
Sites like remax.com and others are outpacing realtor.com but they seem content to keep charging us on top of charges.
We all pay to be members, shouldn't this be a part of that membership?
Oh and of course by accident one of my old marketing plans got out to a seller and he wanted to know why more pictures werent' on Realtor.com.
That's the rant, but the question is " Is $2,000 worth appeasing some sellers and 3 leads?"
Oh, watch out for your boards too. mine just started charging 250 annually for an IDX feed ( per site) that is not a link to their site, and there is no notification of this, you'll just get it added to your bill.
The Dons of the mafia real esatate are getting bigger while the realtor soldiers are getting whacked.

Well, REALTOR.COM hasn't "come around" yet because it's more profitable for them to charge agents out the nose for this feature. They know that they will get the lions share of the traffic (at least to start).

As to our membership dues paying for Realtor.com enhancements - to my knowledge most of the dues you pay yearly goes to the state and local boards; only about $90 of it goes to NAR...I don't think it should be automatically included in your dues but THAT said, I think that their prices are out of the ball park.

There are some agents with 50 to 60 listings and at least ten pictures each, so there is 500-600 pictures on the servers for just ONE agent..multiply that by all the other top producers and you can see why they charge more when you have more listings...

That said - I think the prices they charge are ridiculous and should be a lot less. The cost of hosting has come down drastically in the past 5 years and Realtor needs to catch up in that.

I have gotten some leads from my REALTOR.com enhanced listings, but my office got us a great deal (the cost to the agents is $5 per month for 1-3 listings, then it goes up to $10 and finally $15 per month. Not sure what the office has to pay for this.) Not sure if it's going to rise sharply in a year or not...that's what bugs me - they get you in with a decent price and then jack it up.

I don't know what to say. When it's costing me only $10 a month, I don't mind. It seems worth it to me for that price....but more than that? I may not re-enhance my listings if the price goes through the roof.

Trex -

Here is a great read from Eric on Search about the exact topic you are talking about.

Echoing Mike's sentiment, and reaffirming that article written on Eric on Search - its absolutely not worth it.

Great topic! I feel that it is a waste. I to did enhanced listings for awhile. It was like $30 a month because I didn't have many listings the year before. Then it got jacked up to $300 a month due to my success listing the year before. I decided it wasn't worth it since I didn't get any leads or even hits on my website from Realtor.com. When I called to cancel I complained that it was to expensive then the woman got mad and said well other agents pay it. I said they were suckers and she hung up on me. He He He. Later another called to be sure I wanted to cancel.

My biggest complaint about realtor.com is the featured agent program. Where you pay to be the featured agent for an area. The only problem is realtor.com lets agents that are located 50 miles away from your area be the featured agents. They allow big real estate company chains to pay for all of their agents to be featured agents in all areas of Colorado. I'm sure some agents from Denver that are featured agents in my area don't even know where La Salle, Colorado is. So why would I want to be a featured agent in La Salle, when there are a 100 other agents. I would be buried and never found. Most of my clients don't like Realtor.com either. Not enough info. They tend to use other real estate search sites.

Funny, I woke up this morning asking myself if I was going to do an R.com enhanced site this year (since I've been gone, I'll get to start at the bottom rung for pricing) and voila! Here's the topic. I definitely advise against it if money is an issue OR if you're a heavy listor, but since I have no history for the last two years, I figured I'll do it.

How I'll explain NOT doing it to my sellers if I decide against it is... as explained in the article above... If I thought it would sell the darn house, I'd be all over it. But since the concensus is that it does not help me sell my listings, I'll spend my money elsewhere.

I agree Jennifer if you've didn't have any listings the year before it's a worth a try. I've been telling my broker associate to see about it since he doesn't list to much.

I disagree with everyone (gee there's a suprise) and think it's worth it. You can't measure its value in specific website hits. Most buyers use it to scout the house, then give the ML number to their agent for more info. The agent calls you and you get a showing. It came from r.com, but you never knew it. Almost all of my buyers and lukewarm leads report having gone on to realtor.com to look. So I think it's worth it.

If you're doing well enough that the fee is big, well, enough said.

I do full service discount listings so the fee is to big for me. Most people in my area don't use R.com to search. They use the MLS public search page or Remax's search. Both of which are hands down better then realtor.com. Also I do quite a few listings for land with houses and realtor.com is about useless with those. They never put what the size of the land is on the listings. Plus when searching for Colorado Real Estate of cities, area, or the state with google. realtor.com is no where to be seen in the results. So it doesn't work for me at all.

I tend to have about 8-13 listings, so it only costs me about $750 a year. I just renewed my subscription a week ago. I don't buy it because I get a ton of buyer leads from it. I probably only got 3-4 all last year. But I find it's a fairly powerful portion on my listing presentation.

I tell sellers that "You are not only listed but *featured* on the #1 real estate website in the nation. And they share their database with MSN, AOL, Excite, etc. etc. so you are *featured* on all of these other sites as well...."

It's just one piece of the puzzle, but I like it.

what is the first criteria that a buyer has when searching for a home?

Price!




price trumps all.


Price

makes a listing stand out over any other listing. if a property is priced to sell it will sell fast. if it is overpriced it will sit until it is reduced or expires. i know agents who list any house and then call their client and ask for a reduction every week until the client withdraws or reduces or sells.

price a property correctly and you dont have to worry about being featured and overpriced. no amount of marketing will make an overpriced listing move.

Glad to see the opinions on this.
What I have been doing this year so far is paying the $25 for the virtual tour link on higher end properties.
This still makes the listing stand out.
Another issue would be if you the listing agent or "The floor" Person gets the calls on the listings b/c only the brokers phone number comes up if you are not featured.
Also, $90 per agent to Nar, I don't how it works, I've never payed attention, but even so. My board has 7000 realtors, each paying $90, I think that's more than enough to cover adding pictures and not charging for adding a virtual tour link. Your talking almost 1m every year just from a smaller board.
But still my biggest problem is the results
talking about links to your site from Realtor.com (this is with enhanced listings 15+ monthly) only 48 From Feb 07 Til Dec 07 Out of those 48, 3 leads, one with a phone number.
From Craigslist- 1595 links, and I get about 4-5 leads a month.
From yahoo Classified 892 links
I know buyers may be calling with the MLS number to their realtors, but generally if the buyer is finding the property without you, it's not what they are looking for.
They get the majority of the info. from our e-mails from our systems, or by sitting them in front of the computer.
Every time I've had a buyer call me with some home out of a Real estate mag or from a website, it never turns out to be what they wanted.
Because I've already sent them the homes that fit their criteria.

And all that money paid to NAR helped them build their headquarters. Pretty fancy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Association_of_Realtors

I know. The local board director is going to be our guest speaker at next weeks office meeting. A couple of my associates and myself will ask him what they specifically spend our money on because it seems we pay soo much for almost nothing.