Tech Tips

By Tom Inglesby, Real Estate Business Magazine, October/November 2006

Website Marketing 101: It's Not Just 'Locations' Anymore

Cliché time — What are the three most important items in successful real estate sales?

All together: Location, location and location.

Well, maybe not. "I think it is price, price and price" says Miguel Berger, CRB, e-PRO, GRI, president of Tech Valley Homes in Loudonville, N.Y. "Location you cannot change. If a house is in a certain prime location, that should be reflected in the price. Everything sells for a price. What has happened in our area is we've become more of a technology-oriented area; our market is geared towards the Internet generation. High-tech executives want to go on a site, find the information, download what they want, and they don't want to talk to me first; they want to see it first. That's what we're gearing towards."

And the corollary to that is: Information, information and information. Sometimes, in our MTV worldview, we seem to forget that finding information is the reason people come to our Web sites. We cloud that easy search for details with pretty pictures, amazing flying rubber ducks and a myriad of other things that may look cute to our Internet expert (read teenage son or daughter) but which isn't helping the real expert, the buyer, viewing our site.