New Real Estate business idea

[rvolk75]

Hi guys,
just wanted to run something by you. I was driving in a car today and was stuck in traffic, so I had plenty of time to think about different things. I was thinking, what do buyers really want when searching for homes? Are they looking for reports? Maybe. Are they looking for real estate agents? Maybe. Are they looking for school information? Maybe. But I think that 90% of people searching for homes online, are really looking only for inventory. They want to see what's available that matches their criteria. I came up with an idea for a website that would display the available inventory just like the rest of the websites, but it would also help other real estate agents who are looking for leads.

All I'm doing here is brainstorming. I don't know how to do this or even if it's permitted by law, but I just thought maybe someone can chime in and provide some feedback. Again, I'm just brainstorming here.

This website would be a local site. It would only serve the county that I concentrate in. The name is Bucks County. We currently have about 4,000 homes for sale in Bucks County.

Let's say a person goes online and searches for homes in Bucks County. They find this website. The website would provide only listings. There will be no reports or preapproval links or anything else like that. Just the inventory from our MLS. The user would have different options to search by. Just like any other agent's website, but it would not be cluttered with other stuff. The site would concentrate only on listings in my county. The registration would not be required.

If the person finds a home they like, they would have an option of contacting an agent either for more questions or to setup a showing. They would also have an option to be notified of similar listings that match their criteria.

Here comes the unique part.

I was thinking of having a database of maybe 100 agents. I would have one agent to serve one specific area. When a person has a question about the property, that agent's name and contact information would appear next to the listing. Of course I would need to display the name of the listing brokerage. So when a person needs to contact someone about a specific listing, they would contact the agent that serves that area, not the listing brokerage.

In order for the agent to be a member of this site, they would need to have a website of their own and they would need to place a link to my site from theirs. So that's 100 links from real estate related websites. There would be either a monthly or yearly fee for the agent to be a member of this site. It wouldn't be too much, but it could be a good source of leads for any agent.

The website would also have a blog on it, which would be integrated into the website. Latest blogs would appear on the home page. That's the only "clutter" that would be on the website.

The main idea of this website is to be simple to use, no advertisements, nothing but listings and a great source of leads for other agents and most importantly, it would be a local site. If this site can dominate SERPs in Google and other search engines, it would most likely be the only source for home search in my area. Right now, we have hundreds of agent's sites in Bucks County, as well major players like homegain, trulia, etc.

If the site is simple to use, a good source of information and is a good source of leads for other agents, do you think it can work?

Again, this is just something I was thinking about while I was stuck in traffic and it could be a good idea or a bad idea, but I just wanted to run it by you guys.

Look forward to your feedback.

[webmaster]

I am building a site like that right now for a client actually - IDX for the entire state, each agent is assigned a particular area, and the agents bio / contact shows up along side the listing offering assistance etc - The site is very light on fluff (Branding etc) and very heavy on kick ass search functionality - I think the idea has merit however you need to consider something here:

ROI - you are potentially providing a huge resource for leads (Which you could refer out at 25%) instead you are choosing to designate an area in exchange that they provide you with a link - great deal for the agent, bad deal for you. I am sure you could manage to use that 25% referral fee to pay for a campaign targeting higher quality higher volume (More than 100) links if you if you played your cards right.

The idea would work, it just seems like a lot of work with not much of a payoff for you in the end.

Because of that fact, as an agent I would be skeptical of a bait and switch here - once you get really established as an authority, what's to stop you from changing the model?

[rvolk75]

Thanks for the feedback. Regarding charging the fees, I was thinking of either a per lead fee, a monthly fee or a yearly fee. Since this site would be local, I wouldn't want to upset any of the fellow agents.

By nature, I'm an honest person and if something like this takes off, I still wouldn't want to change the business model, just because I can make an extra buck.

I just think that a concept like that has great potential to help everyone involved.

[Michael Paul Eau Claire]

From the agent perspective, it would have to be a pretty kickass website to get me to pay you a fee AND link people away from my own lead-generating site to yours.

You might be better off to market to agents who do not already have a (good) web presence. You could partner with them rather than compete with agents who have good sites already.

That kinda ruins the "100 links" theory, but you can get 100 links easily enough.