I'm trying to determine if I should purchase the street name of a listing I have as a domain name. I'd like to here the feedback from people that have or are doing that. Also if you could recommend companies that you worked with that you were happy with.

I tried doing a search here on this forum but I didn't come up with anything. I think it had to do with the fact that I'm not sure how to phrase what it is actually called.

Thanks

I would like to do that too. Right now I just set up a subdomain- CSColorado.com/123MainStreet- but I would rather have a seperate domain. I was thinking of joining realestateshows.com and using the address for each show. I've heard you can get domains as cheap as $1.99/yr? Is that right? I've just never taken the time to research it. I've not even bothered to register through GoDaddy because I figure you would have to pay to transfer it anyway... Anyone know more about this than I do?

Cheapest i've found is 8.99 from registerfly.com.

I'll be doing this with all my listings in the near future (Got a great idea for it). My feeling is that the $8.99 will be extremely effective on your cost/return ratio. I'm already seeing a big result from my website (We just hit #4 on MSN for my city's search, without real estate in the title).

It'll be a great decision to go with it, i like registerfly.com

Our team uses a company called Single Property Sites and are very happy with them. You can see one of ours at 408 Wynstone . It gives school info and maps automatically. You can also include virtual tours, photos, and documents.

Another option is using Brian Rodgers' Real Estate Toolbox University which has an entire website system including the ability to create single property websites.

I dont have any listings yet, but when i do, I plan on utilizing this technique.
Just register the domain name, and if you have ability and software to design the site, do it up. It is cheap and just takes a lil time to design the small site.
Put the address on a sign rider. Passer-bys, open house attendees, curious neighbors will see it and hopefully visit your website. And if potential sellers like the idea, maybe they will call you to list their home.
Also, have links to search the MLS and a link to your own website. Maybe convert some of these people into buyer clients.

I started doing this about 3-4 years ago. At that time, it was really impressive to clients during the listing presentation.

As it has become more commonplace (and more economical), I am not really sure if it is a big differentiation anymore. For certain sellers, it still is impressive.

I promoted the heck out of my websites. I used them in all promotion. It seems that they never got that much traffic. I never got any leads from them.

So, if you are going to do it, realize that they are there as an additional tool that may extend the reach of your promotion to a small number of folks. It's definitely not going to be an ace in the hole.

I had a guy make me a simple, editable web template and I edited the content whenever I got a new listing (takes only a little more than average technical skills).

GoDaddy has hosting plans that cost around $6/mo. and they sell domain names for $8.

I am interested in knowing how this is working for you guys. I have done things like this on high end homes that have a bounty on them. One point if I may. Its not just about the $8.99 to reg a site. Its the development time, the hosting, the time spent away from other things more productive. Now, if it is something that someone on your team can put together then great, but it better look great too. You can't have enough touch points, but this one should be reserved for special cases. Just one man's opinion.

oneandone.com is the best for domain names at $5.99/yr. Godaddy's $1.99 rate is if you buy other stuff along with it....

I tend to think business is about marketing. My niche market is me. My marketing is me. My branding is me. If one day I market
12345mainstreet.com, then 15485lazyavenue.com, then 54152icecoldlane.com, how will it re-enforce me? How can that help others to remember me?

Do you remember how "hot" email was a few years back? OH how it was the thing to have. Aprivatestreetaddress.com promotion is nice to "include" in a listing package but I dont think it qualifies as a differentiation/unique tool anymore.

Godaddy sometimes has domains as low as $1.99 a year but they are usually .info or .biz which works just as well as .com.

I'm a member of Point2Agent and I have a professional version of the site. At this level you can creat a subdomain for your listing. For example, my site's address is http://www.ephiladelphiarealestate.com. When I added a listing to my site for 621 Croft Drive, I can automatically create a subdomain for that listing. The subdomain now is http://621croftdrive.ephiladelphiarealestate.com.

Once you're a professional member of P2A, this feature is included in your membership.

Good luck.

Good idea. I also like ephiladelphiarealestate.com/621croftdrive

Each time you give out the address it reminds people of your main company ephiladelphiarealestate.com.

Something to keep an eye on ( just in case ) is the state board will soon regulate the use of domain names in real estate commerce. Make sure ephiladelphiarealestate is the name of your company.

It seems to mee that the website ephiladelphiarealestate.com violates the license law covering advertising because the Realtors company name is not visible until near the bottom of the page. It is not as visible as the agents contact information.

It'll be interesting to see how this will unfold.

Although ephiladelphiarealestate.com isn't a registered real estate company the same applies to REMAX.com, coldwellbanker.com, century21.com, and all the franchises out there.

If the franchise can use their domain name to offer listings without a license then ephiladelphiarealestate.com should be allowed as well.

I've been reading this thread, and I have to say that from a "promotion" POV, this doesn't make sense.

It's not easy to get a real estate web site to rank well because there's too many sites that are using spam to get to the top of the SERPs.

These days, age of the domain plays a very large role in how soon a site will rank for any given term.

So, having said that, purchasing a new domain in order to sell the property would take you at least a year in the index before it'd rank because it's a new domain.

The better way to do this is, get a domain if you don't already have one, and then build a specific page on that site using the address as the URL.

Example, let's say you have a property at:
1234 Main Street

You can create a page on your site as:
1234.Main.Street.htm
1234-main-street.htm

and so forth.

Using underscores in the URL is not a wise choice and this has even been said by Matt Cutts of Google.

It's better to use a hyphen (-) or a period (.) in the URL.

Once you have the themed page built on your site, you'd simply link to it from your index page where you might list your "New Properties."

This would get the page indexed much faster and help it to rank much quicker because it's on an established site that Google already knows about.

Plus, when the property sells, you can then change the page content to indicate the property has sold or even 301 the page to a new property listing you have on your site.

hope this helps

The main benefit of marketing like this is that it can indeed help you win the listing.

But do think about these 3rd-level domains - thats one heck of lot of text to remember, takes longer to type in, easy to get wrong, and its not going to look so neat on the old sign rider either!

I think you need to go back to what you are trying to do with such an approach. Personally I believe the first objective is to win the listing and thats where we really try to offer most help.
When you win the listing then start paying for stuff (a few dollars per listing per month with our system) - and you can also get domain names from any source if you wish and link them to sites you create.

One neat thing we've done recently is automate the whole promotion process too - so with a click, your listing is sent to Google base and Trulia for free (more portals coming on line soon). We also link you to Realtor.com Picturepath too.

I see a lot of chat and discussion about these sites from a SEO perspective and honestly I think thats missing the point. This is pragmatic marketing and selling tool. The primary benefits are not related to SEO. For SEO you really need to look elsewhere. Although, I would say that you can now keep SOLD sites live for as long as you like for free now and this will end up giving you a lot of really nice back links in due course!