Can anyone provide me with a few website designed for Realtors. I have contacted I-House but want to shop around. I looked at GoDaddy.com as well but not sure if they can provide me with the information I need. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

these guys seem to know what they're doing:

http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/

The one I use is point2agent but they have been slow to make improvements to their templates and menu bars. I do not know why they have not embraced css templates. They have stuck with old looking templates which seem to be driving away lots of business.

elance.com is good if you want something custom, but not that expensive. However the building of the site will be more 'hands on' and you'll likely be having a seperate company supplying the actual listings to it.

When it comes down to site selection it really depends on how much you are willing to do yourself or how much you want to do. I made my first site in 94 and could not hire some one to do one for me then or now. I would not want someone else doing it. Most website builders are designer/artist and do great designs but leave out the content.

IMO The best book written on web sites was written 20 years before the net. The author was the king of advertising and wrote the best work I have ever found on advertising. The name of the book is Ogilvy on Advertising. If you read it before you spent your cash on a site you should be able to put together a site that customers actually like.

I would look at templatemonster.com they have a section for real estate. A lot of there templates are extremely professional looking and are easy to customize.

I know several people over at realestatewebmasters.com are very happy. The downfall is that they are pricey. I hear you get what you pay for, but I just don't have the confidence to pull the trigger yet.

The truth is if you want something good, you either have to learn how to do it yourself, or pay someone to do it. Going the cheapie route will do you very little good unless you know what your're doing and can do it yourself.

Developing the website portion of the site is the easy part. Handling the database and the IDX is where things get complicated and hiring someone out makes the most since.

The real estate website vendor business must be very competitive. I get several phone calls or emails a week asking for my business.

I use the IDX from my MLS. It's not as fancy as others but it's also not expensive, and it has served me quite well - lots of times we look and look for things and something is right there under our nose. I pay a little extra for my MLS feed, and it works great. I use the feed and iframes. looks practically seamless.

Would suggest using wordpress with mimbo template - clean professional look.

Wordpress divorces you from knowing html - you can easily add content at any time with wordpress. If you are really strapped for cash wordpress.com can host for free. I would recommend using a hosting company though. Most offer easy installation of wordpress from cpanel: Fantastico

Here is an example of the mimbo template in action:
www.1stforGascony.com

Edit... my quote did not take so just see the post above.

I second the use of wordpress. Themes are like opinions and we all know what opinions are like.

Here is another example of a WordPress Realtor site.

http://www.billremington.com

I guess I could expand on my thoughts a touch...

- You can setup auto feeds via a cron job which populate your site with fresh content weekly, daily or hourly

- Easy to self update

- Cheap (WP is Free and the customization is affordable if you don't want to do it yourself)

- Tons of free Plugins and Widgets which help with search engine relevance, user experience, traffic, etc...

- Free themes which are better than many paid for themes

- Google, Bing, Yahoo LOVE Word Press.

The site I mentioned above (http://www.billremington.com) was launched 3 weeks ago and already has 1300 +/- indexed pages. The Realtor, Bill, has already seen his request for more info increase as well as requests for his newsletters. Yadda yadda yadda.

Anyway, these days you can get all of this done for relatively cheap ($1000+/-) if you do not want to do it yourself. However, and I say this as someone who does and charges for web services like this, you can do it yourself if you have time and the willingness to learn something new.

mY411 - not sure about using autocron jobs to pull content.

It is duplicate content - google will pick it up eventually

Hey franophile - Google actually picks it up relatively quickly. However, they are becoming more cooperative with duplicate content which is not deceptive and with the intent of bettering ones page rank or organic position. Checkout "Canonicalization." Google Webmaster tools has a great writeup on it.

Duplicate content debate is a can of worms, as you probably know :)

I am on the non-penalty side of the fence; so is your local TV station, as well as anyone who belives in the mehcanics of syndication...


-AP

Not sure if its been mentioned before, but "Open Realty" is another FREE option.

This post got me interested in digging deeper into word press as I have been using Open Realty for years and always thought of word press as "blog only" wow has it evolved.

In fact most of the review sites I have found have this to say:

[quote]I’ve worked with Open-Realty, and — to say it bluntly — it’s a huge pain in the [censored]. When you scratch the surface of OR, you begin to realize how cobbled together it is. Customizing the code to work as it should requires a steep learning curve. The templates are relatively simple to work with, but the administration section is horrible. The Open Realty user experience is just awful[/quote]

Looks like its time to spend a weekend or two getting my website changed over and updated. :grin:

Sure, wordpress was known mostly as a blog platform, but their sites are phenomenal as well. I dont know how SEO-friendly they might be, but as far as appearance they are right on the money. My advice would be to perform due diligence prior to contracting a web develop, as I am still experiencing the aftershocks of a turbulent web design process.

Here are a few to look at.

realestatewebmasters.com
1parkplace.com
z57.com
linkurealty.com
advanceacess.com
diversesolutions.com
and wordpress.org

I recommend realestatewebmasters. If you want to go cheap, wordpress.

What business is our host in?

Is that: http://www.rncinternet.com/real_estate.html - seems like a good deal.

I like the sites at www.realestatewebmasters.com/ , I've seen several and have one I am yet to get built. Also seems like a good deal but pricey to jump in to compared to most template sites.

Advanced Access - once a good company that has been sold to Dominion - but I think it has hit bottom and is coming up a little at a time.

Disclosure - I like RNC - loyal to Doug - I like REW and I have one, I use to like AA, I have one, it ranks well but not without a lot of time and effort.


So many factors that if known may make us recommend one over another - back end is a lot of it - ease of adding pages and editing - how many pages can add - how do you add listings - gosh - so many things.

Any comments about Agentimage? Past or present clients of AI, give some input please.

I want to know too... I called them today... It was high. Man, This is so much work, trying to figure out who to go to URGG!!@

There are some great suggestions in here.

I always recommend that you get a website that you own, and in most cases that means going custom even if it a bit more expensive.
Look at it this way. I think realestatewebmasters probably has the best bang for the buck, with their CMS, good SEO site structure, and good support, but after you buy the site, say for 1k.
( I used to have a REW site and it was about that much after it was all said and done which is really a great price)

Then you have to pay your "hosting" fees which is going to be about 30-50 dollars per month, whether you go with REW, AA, or whomever. After having that site for 2 years at 30 dollars a month more for hosting you are paying 720$ dollars for that 2 years, AND YOU DO NOT OWN THAT SITE.

Where as if you get a custom site done for 750 one time, you own it. Then your actual hosting fees are maybe 7 dollars per month. If you are in the business for the long haul, you can see how getting a custom site is actually much cheaper.

On top of that, don't you want a custom site that your prospects don't see all over the internet, that is YOUR design? With the help of a great designer of course...

Make sure you get a good CMS, like Joomla, Drupal, or Wordpress.
Make sure it is built with SEO in mind.
Then make sure you own it. Most of the providers out there do not produce a site you own unfortunately.

Hope that helps. PM me if you would like more info.

Thanks

Did you get your site finished?

ExpertRealtorWeb, to whom are you directing your question?