I am not a realtor so forgive me for this interjection. Realty sites are so local. Is it possible to learn who is likely to move to your service area and target buyers before they arrive. Are there demographic reports that show where new home owners/renters are likely to come from?

This could help to justify your site and may help you to find new clients?

Q...

haha, i just visited the link and that site as absolutely as terrible as the ones Richard was complaining about. Was that built using frontpage LOL? It looks circa 1998 with those awful colors. Too too funny.

Tony,
http://agentfaces.com

people build ugly sites without frontpage. FrontPage isn't the problem, the designer is.

I have created some really nice looking sites...with Frontpage.

FP is fine as long as you don't use the WYSIWYG.

I use the WYSIWYG option. I just go back in the HTML and clean up the junk that I don't like, and I use CSS for my text formatting.

Hello All

Yes, these WYSIWYG solutions are great only to a certain degree. If you do not know what you are doing, you can really make a mess Besides, design, layout, and coding should be left up to the professionals and editing can be left up to those who do not have a design, layout, and coding background.

Stay focused everyone

Try Ken Evoy site http://www.sitesell.com/GREGORY1.html.html

His site ranks better than IBM!

I suppose, like everything else on the web, it's so difficult for many Realtors to stay up with the changes that regularly occur on the web. Besides, most Realtors are NOT webmasters and rely on others to provide their web presence. What's hot and what works on the web is changing all the time and for most, they simply cannot stay up with it. They might put up a website that works (based on today's standard) and before they can pay for their domain renewal, it's old hat. Consider, for example, how Web 2.0 is changing the landscape on the web.

The Internet IS where people go today to begin their home search and it's necessary for Realtors to have a current web site if they expect to remain competitive. If the Realtor is not web savvy, they should find a good web person who is savvy to take care of their web presence.

Somebody said earlier in this thread that the Internet is the great equalizer... and I believe that's true for those forward thinking individuals who take advantage of it.

How so?

His site is a 6. IBM is a 9.

Aside from the fact saying it ranks better is like saying an apple tastes better than an orange...neither site has anything to do with the other!

You should upgrade to the new Microsoft Expression Web Designer (or at least give the free trial version a try). This is not a FP Upgrade, but a new web design platform. Nice, clean code, great CSS tools, and more. IMHO, it's an advanced tool that is much better than Dreamweaver.

If I were still designing websites for profit, I would. Right now I'm not, so the expense is not justified, since I only need to maintain the site I already designed. I know enough about working with the html and css code that I can get the job done well without the extra expense.

How is it better than DW? My husband uses DW and I hate it. Give me some ammunition so instead of upgrading I can talk him into something else.

I also am glad that most don't get it. I am working to try and make my site good, but with no budget to hire a good developer I am doing it in house and it is not easy to do it well.