One minor point ---

If you do use your own domain for email --- make sure you keep ownership of the domain.

I've seen many agents locally have a site with an individual email. Then, they let the site lapse and are frustrated that they lose the email.

The bottom line is that you must maintain the domain registration.

^^^^^good point! same with a phone number!

Having your own email address is cheap (compared to a lot of other things) and gives you the opportunity to brand yourself in every email.

For instance, If you are john@johnsmith.com you can set up an autosig with John@JohnSmith.com as your email address. The internet doesn't distinguish bewteen caps and lower case in email addresses.

For pretty cheap (less than $100 per year) you can then have that email forwarded to you normal email address (say forwarded to a comcast or yahoo or verizon or whatever address) that you get for free. And most forwarders will let you use "unlimited alias" so you can set up an email for each property or each subdivision you cover or each town you cover or whatever you wish.

The advantage is that you have a professional looking email address. That sure is a lot better than being something like bongoboy@bababooie.com, the type of email addresses I often see in print ads and on the MLS.

if you set yourself up with google apps you can use gmail and have it properly branded (@yourdomain.com) rather than "so-and-so@gmail.com on behalf of so-and-so@yourdomain.com". Huge difference...and it's free!

ROFL - this made me choke on my pretzel. Thanks for the laugh! LOL

You are silly, estatereal! LOL Of course he was kidding!

lol...like i said...i was very, very dense today:-)

When you use the company email address the company has the right to read and copy your emails. Some do, some don't.

Aha, but if you're in Canada, the name@brokerage is almost de rigeur. Many agents have their own website instead of the one their brokerage makes available to them, but even then they'll often use the name@brokerage e-address.
Part of the reason -- and an important one -- is a legal requirement that the (real) agent is the brokerage not the agent him/herself. Moreover, every real estate firm has to be named and identified in its ads and websites as SucAndSuchBrokerage. This means an individual agent isn't allowed to advertise in his/he own name alone. The ad has to include the brokerage's name.
In effect, the law is that it's the brokerage NOT the agent that's seen as the (true) owner of any listing. Thus, if you want to change to another brokerage you cannot take your still active listings with you UNLESS you have your current Broker of Record's consent.
See, we Canucks DO do things differently, eh?

Duncan

We have similar rules - the brokerage must be prominently named in any and all ads - but we are allowed to have our own email addresses.

Doesn't sound much different to me - our law doesn't state we have to have a brokerage email address though. Just that the agent's name can not be alone, or more prominent than the brokerage name

Duncan,

are you allowed to have a gmail account that you use as your primary email?

for exmple could you use >>>> duncan@gmail.com

I had bad experience with it, so now I do not use my brokers name on my e-mail address.

Does this mean you can't put your personal cell number on your business cards?

i asked about the gmail account. if you can have

agentname@gmail.com

you can have agentname@agentname.com


i could have read it wrong, but it sounded like the broker name had to be in the email.

In my state, New York, at least, you CAN put your cell phone number on your business card...but the broker's phone number has to be there as well...and I think it has to be larger, but I'm not positive about that.