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.

Well, no, maybe your OWN buyers who are receiving your own mailings and emails are not going to need to go on REALTOR.COM to find it...but there are other agents out there who, amazingly enough, have loyal buyers who visit REALTOR.com themselves and find listings they like and then call their agent and say they want to see it...my buyer did that. In addition to what I sent her, she was constantly going onto REALTOR just to see for herself.

Navarac is right - you really have no guaranteed way of finding out if the realtor.com enhanced listings really work or not. The best thing to do is drop it and see if you do as well without it. If you do, then great...you're saving yourself a lot of money.

For me, it's worth it to be able to put it in a listing presentation...so if I get one good sale from it then it pays for itself. I don't like that they charge so much. It's like they just keep asking their members to bend over a little further.

I will say this, one of the top producers in our entire MLS (ranks in the top ten out of over 400 agents) has used REALTOR.COM enhanced listings for years and has no plans to stop.

There seems to be substantial misunderstanding of NAR's relationship with REALTOR.COM.

First, a little bit of history. In 1996, NAR had a problem. They knew that the Internet was going to be terribly important. At that time, Microsoft was preparing to launch HomeAdvisor and there were a multitude of national real estate web sites popping up.

The Board of Directors was concerned that REALTORS to survice would be forced to partner with these various sites, paying fees to a multitude of different enterprises.

The problem: They realized it would take literally hundreds of millions of dollars to compete (FYI: REALTOR.COM has cost $2 billion over the past decade to develop the site -- that has been the cost of marketing the site, updating the technology, etc. --- I know of a national web site that ran $11 million just to get it launched -- these things are not cheap). They thought about going to the membership to generate those huge dollars --- and decided it was just too expensive.

They decided to find a partner to develop a site and raise the capital necessary. That was the birth of what was then Homestore, Inc. (now Move, Inc.).

Obviously, they were limited what they could negotiate given the fact that NAR wasn't putting dollars into the deal. So, they licensed the REALTOR name and were able to get the following: 1) Every REALTOR listings would appear for free with a basic listing. 2) FSBOs would never display on the site (without NAR's permission) 3) And, NAR would permanently have 2 board members on the 11 person HomeStore board.

The deal worked. REALTOR.COM became the destination site (branding our profession). Its traffic is enormous: 5.5-6.0 million visitors a month. Of note, 68% of ALL time spent searching real estate (including company & agent sites, local mls sites, other national sites) is spent on REALTOR.COM. NAR members have not had to cough up $2 billion to create the site. Members who choose to pay for enhancements have footed the bill.

Move, Inc. has not been highly profitable. They made $22 million last year. Their stockholders have lost more than $1 billion over the past decade. In contrast, NAR dues generated just $161 million last year.

Every agent who ever has a listing benefits from this enormous investment. Remember, nearly 70% of all time looking at real estate is on the site. It is not on your local site. It is not on your mls site. Nor, is it to national sites like REMAX.COM, YAHOO, Craigslist, etc. The vast majority of the public spends their time on REALTOR.COM. Now the other sites have value. They just aren't as critical as REALTOR.COM. And, for at least basic visibility, the cost is zero. Thousands of homes have sold because they were seen on REALTOR.COM.

REALTOR.COM could be free. But, the cost of doing so would be to more than double NAR dues (to generate the required $200 million each year to just cover the expenses). Would you rather have the entire NAR membership do that or have those who choose to pay for listing enhancements pay the bills?

I personally think that the NAR Board of Directors made a wise choice, one that has significantly benefited NAR members.

Without that decision, I suspect we would each be forced to pay substantial fees to numerous national web sites to get any visibility. Or, they might be charging us referral fees on each transaction (kind of like HomeGain and HouseValues do). REALTOR.COM's basic listings have prevented those models from taking hold. And, that, in my opinion, is the key value of REALTOR.COM.

One other tidbit.

Sure. NAR built a big building in D.C. But, do you know how much of NAR's revenues go towards its buildings (D.C. and Chicago)?

Only 4%. The rest is spent on lobbying, association support, PR, research, education, etc.

I wish my company budget only allocated 4% for occupancy costs.

I know people love to gripe about anything that is large and out of area. But, to be brutal, NAR is an asset to our profession. It is our advocate in Washington. They provide a voice for our profession in the national media (particular important in these challenging times), and provide an infrastructure for education, ethical behavior and networking.

Imagine for a moment that we were like accountants. They have associations. But, there is no powerful national one. We'd be virtually voiceless and endowed with little clout. Instead, NAR is one of the premier trade associations in the United States.

In a former life, I was a Chief of Staff to U.S. House Member. In my experience, I can tell you that NAR was far more powerful than groups like the homebuilders, nurses, etc. And, it was on par with the major lobbying powers like the banks and financial institutions.

Folks, there is some real value here. And, unsurprisingly, it costs some money.

P.S. There will be those who think I'm some kind of sycophant for NAR. I was formerly on my MLS board. Now, I have no position. And, I am critical of several elements of NAR, primarily inconsistencies in the Code of Ethics area (I'd create an appeals process to create consistency between boards). I am also an advocate for frugality at the local association and MLS level.

Actually, this would be a great start to a new thread. Consumer product companies (and others, I'm sure) use what is known as a decision tree model to help marketers understand the flow of decisions used in the purchase of their product. Basically, it could start the recognition of a need, then how much money is to be allocated to the purchase, then where to purchase, then which brand and so on all the way through to payment at the register. I'd love to see the results of research like that in the home purchase cycle.