Real Estate Agents Turn To Technology To Expand Client Base
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Real estate agents are turning to new media tools to help expand their business. NY1's Shazia Khan filed the following report.Brian Lewis, an executive vice president with Halstead Property, tweets about his listings. The other day, it was about a $1.1 million co-op on West 83rd Street. Lewis tweeted that the seller received multiple offers the second week it was on the market and was asking for final bids.
“It keeps my buyers and sellers who have been following me in the loop about what the market is doing,” says Lewis. “A broker who wants to stay afloat and soar in this industry has to know all of the tools that are out there.”
Social media websites like Twitter and Facebook are just two ways real estate professionals are turning to technology to increase their sphere of influence. Halstead recently rolled out virtual online websites for their agents.
“Their customers can sign in and be able to see everything their agent is seeing, all of the listings,” explains Halstead Property President Diane Ramirez.
To stay competitive, Jacky Teplitzky, a managing director at Prudential Douglas Elliman recently hired a marketing Internet consultant.
“I wanted to know, where are people going these days? Are they on Twitter? Are they blogging? Are they on Google all the time? Where are they going?” Teplitzky asks. “Where is the prominent place that they go to so I can make absolutely sure that I’m there together with the clients.”
She also wanted to increase her presence on the real estate website StreetEasy, which its vice president of strategic development Dawn Doherty says receives more than 30,000 visits a day. So, Teplitzky now shells out $75 a month to be a member of the site's new service called StreetEasy Pro.
“So how it works for the agent is they can go from their standard profile on Street Easy, which shows their current listings, to showing every single transaction they were a part of since 2004,” says Doherty.
And, like StreetEasy.com, Corcoran, too, launched a free iPhone app.
“The great things is, because the phone is a mobile device, it knows exactly where you are so you can search for an apartment right in the neighborhood,” says Christina Lowris of the Corcoran Group. “But if you are interested in any other neighborhood in Manhattan or Brooklyn, you can search those, as well.”