Have you noticed that when you go to a leading real estate portal today, you can look up any address? This single strategy has moved consumers away from property search on agent, team, broker, franchise, and MLS websites. Consumers are not going to the websites of companies that sell property - they are going to lead generation websites because they can deliver a search result for every property in America and find information on either their home or a specific home they are interested in.
It’s table stakes to compete online today, and Nautilent can deliver this competitive feature to any of our customers. Every broker should demand a parcel centric search from their technology partner!
Portals launched this capability in 2006, and other than Redfin, real estate brokers and MLSs missed the trend until very recently. This is one of the most important strategies for success online with property search.
Today, there are a half dozen search sites that have gone parcel-centric - developing a webpage for every address in America. Realtor.com, Zillow, Trulia, Movoto, Homes.com, Redfin, REMAX.com, and Compass all offer parcel-centric search experiences for consumers. This feature is essential for any enterprise brokerage website today and beyond. Zillow had all of the addresses before they had listings, demonstrating the value that consumers get from off market property information, especially estimated values. Your site will not attract consumers away from these sites without this critical component.
Search Engine Optimization
Aside from allowing consumers to access property pages of information on all properties, there is a search engine benefit. Once you have all of those addresses published on your brokerage website, search engines begin to index them. Have you ever noticed that your new listing appears at the the top of search engine rankings on portal websites before yours? It’s because they generated the search result for that property address many years ago - long before you listed the property. When the listing became available for sale, they appended the MLS photos and other details to the parcel page that already existed.
Clients Can Claim Their Home
One of the top emerging consumer features of top performing websites is the ability for consumers to claim their home on your website. Consumers have long abandoned the practice of filling out a form to get an answer to what their home is worth. Today’s professionals must publish home values on every property, and allow consumers to track the value of their home. Today’s homeowner has a portal from their child’s school, from their doctor, from their banker, from their investment advisor, from their insurance company. Where is the portal for managing your home?
Parcel Boundaries and Map Illustrations
There are many reasons that consumers want to look at a neighborhood with the parcel boundaries illustrated. Agents always use this feature in tax solutions like CRS Data, Realtors Property Resource, Realist, and others. Consumers like to digest this information in the context of a home they want to buy or sell. Parcel maps provide lot boundaries, and even allow the consumer to understand options like adding an additional dwelling unit or a fenced yard for a dog.
This feature boosts engagement and builds lasting relationships with your home buyers and can be a game-changer for your website. This may not only keep them interested in your offerings, but also help you to create a loyal client base.
Knowing the Homeowner
For the enterprise brokerage, you can gain an advantage over portals by thinking, as we have, about how to take this elemental data further. For example, most enterprise brokerages also have commercial opportunities with stand along commercial real estate brokerages, or commercial specialists in their office. Many firms also have property management businesses and handle commercial and residential leases. Our parcel record strategy not only leverages the power of developing property pages for every single family home, but for rental properties and commercial properties. Moreover, for every property address in America, but our back office solutions put the power of public record data into the hands of sales professionals. Although it is difficult to know exactly who lives in every home, to the extent that resident information is available, we deliver that to our customers. Real estate agents need more than a name - they need a phone number and an email address.
Nautilent can deliver this for your enterprise brokerage.