I am wondering what peoples thoughts are on creating sites for single properties. Would you do it? Is it worth it? Recently a client asked us to do this for them, and really it doesnt look bad at all http://www.fsborestonlakefront.com she has done a pretty good job with the template.

Thus my question - as a listing agent would you do this? Do you think showing prospects sites like this would help you win the listing? I know there are services that have been discussed recently that allow you to create a website for a listing, but they dont really look all that great and dont take a lot of effort, this lady spent a ton of time getting hers up (Probably 5 hours minimum involved)

Now - if you would do this, what properties would you do it for - over 500k over 1 mill?

What about getting the clients to do the work "Please provide the following and I will post it on a site for you"

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If it involves domain registration, it's silly. ICANN isn't geared for throw-away domain names and the reg time minimum is one year. But even if that were feasible, there are a slew of other problems with stand-alone sites for real estate.

First, it's contrary to the composition of the Web. Stand-alone sites are weak and nearly impossible to promote because they offer little substance and cannot compete with sites that draw hundreds of visitors looking at thousands of properties.

Second, just because a property has it's own "site" doesn't mean the presentation is any more complete and informative than if it where part of a larger, more sophisticated site along side several other properties. The best real estate web sites are capable of showcasing lisitngs with everything from virtual tours to interactive maps and comps. That type of technology is expensive to implement for one, lone piece of real estate.

So far as price is concerned, million-dollar properties are - pardon the pun - a dime a dozen nowadays. A million dollars is the median price of homes in, for instance, Orange County, Ca.

In my opinion the Web is driven by a more holistic idea whereby consolidation is rewarded and splinter sites are largely ignored.

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Template + Subdomain = Fairly easy.

High end luxury listings = Not a bad idea.

Standard residential listings = Probably not worth it.

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I agree with most everything languard said but I feel this isn't a tool to actually get any kind of organic search traffic, but just a listing tool. You would use this tool by posting the url in any & all print advertising you do for this property (ads, sign riders, brochures, etc.). And that's about all the traffic you could hope to get. This is just to impress the seller to list with you vs. another agent.

The $8.95 throw-away domain isn't a big expense but I'd be interested in the cost of doing a full site like this. I like the printable brochure - would be a great feature for our regular listings .

It's weird how when you click on FSBO listing or MLS listing in the top menu you are taken off the site & might never make it back if you start clicking on links on those pages. That should be set up to create a new window, IMO.

This is a lot of work for one listing to me. In my area, it would definitely have to be a listing worth over a million dollars (they're not as "average" here as they might be in CA).

And I can't imagine the cost of having a template set up like this would be worth it to me vs. getting an address domain listing through one of those other sources. They might not look as good but I don't think a seller would realize that fact as I don't think I'd have a local agent showing them a REW version - LOL!

In this particular situation, it looks like this is a FSBO listing & maybe the FSBO is paying all or part of the expense. That would be interesting.

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Southwest Chicago Suburbs Real Estate is an affordable area with close access to downtown Chicago. Money Magazine says that Orland Park real estate is one of the best places to live in the U.S. Next door you can find Tinley Park homes for sale and get Orland Park amenities at a more affordable price.

Yeah, she is an FSBO - and I would have set it up differently myself, but I had nothing to do with the setup, she just paid us to set it up in one of our templates the way she wanted it.

In terms of traffic / rankings - that isnt the point, I completely agree with you langard it would never compete, but its not meant to, its meant to help the agent land the listing by impressing the potential client. And yes you would only use it in your actual marketing in print, radio, or a link off your main site. So the amount of traffic would be very minimal (Although it wouldnt be impossible to close the deal from that site)

Or in the fsbo model, with some creative PPC you might be able to sell it yourself.

In terms of cost to set up - it wouldnt cost much at Judy, as long as you created the pages yourself in the CMS yourself and can change your own pic (Which you know how to do

If I were to do it, I would probably only have 3 domains and use them over and over again changing out the pics and content when a listing sold. Put my best listings in there etc - those who are fans of 3 way link exchange (I am not) could use it as a link exchange center to bolster their main site to.

There are a couple of pros (Which arent really all that big of a deal IMO other than impressing the client and landing the listing) but the only cons I can see are the initial cost of domain and site setup, and the amount of time you need to spend creating the pages for the feature (5-10 pages at 10-15 minutes of your own time)

Im certainly not trying to sell anything here, as I dont really want to get into this business, there is no money in it, but I just thought it was interesting as it is the second time it has come up in as many weeks and I thought I would get others feedback

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In my opinion the Web is driven by a more holistic idea whereby consolidation is rewarded and splinter sites are largely ignored.

Baloney.

One of the most successful ventures, composed of thousands of splinter sites is

http://www.myspace.com/

I think for the average Joe (Jane) buyer, the referral of a unique URL for a high end property adds a bit of 'sizzle'.

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Salami.

The site you mention is only visible because it's a typical compilation of those "thousands" of splinter sites. That effectively makes it a giant, holistic, splinter-site directory which illuminaties my point. On their own, those same sites are lost forever in the shadowland of the Web.

More on topic, if you want to offer separate sites for clients, why don't you just use canonical subdomains? Something like Listing.YourDomain.com. They you can create and destroy them as need be. You also already have everything installed to make them operate properly if you use your own domain as the parent. No penalties for duplicate content either.

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why don't you just use canonical subdomains

now see, something good has come from this spirited discussion, that's the best idea yet

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That is a great idea with the exception of those, like me, that have long urls to begin with. There's a story associated with my long url which I won't go into here but that just wouldn't work for my sites.

However, I have my marketing short url that I use as a 301 permanent redirect to my long url. I'm assuming I can't use that, correct?

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Southwest Chicago Suburbs Real Estate is an affordable area with close access to downtown Chicago. Money Magazine says that Orland Park real estate is one of the best places to live in the U.S. Next door you can find Tinley Park homes for sale and get Orland Park amenities at a more affordable price.

I suppose if I were in that position I'd register a single, short domain name like XYZHomes.com or something and use it as the parent for all the listing subdomain children.

Then you just set up a CNAME record for the listings as Listing1.XYZHomes.com and Listing2.XYZHomes.com and Listing3.XYZHomes.com, etc.

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