MRIS, the Mid-Atlantic Multiple Listing Service (MLS) that facilitates nearly $103 million a day in real estate transactions, announced the relaunch and rebrand of its consumer-facing home search website, MRIShomes.com, formerly HomesDatabase.com. The rebranded site and companion mobile app provide the most accurate and up-to-date real estate listings available, along with outstanding resources for consumer real estate education. The app is designed to work on all mobile platforms with Apple, Android and Blackberry devices.
A new advertising campaign will aggressively promote the site and its key differentiator—the most accurate Real Time Local Listings™. The advertising mix will feature several taglines including, “The shortest route from search to sold™,” and appear on television, radio, web, print, and outdoor ads. The campaign will extend across the entire MRIS geographic footprint, including Maryland, D.C., and parts of Virginia, Delaware, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
According to the National Association of REALTORS’ annual Buyer Survey, most home buyers start their search online. However, industry research indicates that many listings online often contain inaccurate information. “With the spring buying season about to heat up – and a historically low inventory of homes on the market – consumers need a trusted source of real time, accurate real estate information,” said John L. Heithaus, MRIS Chief Marketing Officer. “Only MRIShomes.com provides ALL the latest real estate listings straight from the source.”
“I receive inquiries and questions every day from my buyer clients about certain houses for sale that they found ‘on the Internet’. Unfortunately, my response to them 8 out of 10 times is that the homes have been under contract for quite some time. Once my clients start using MRIShomes.com, they absolutely love it because we are now both looking at the same up-to-date data,” says Thai Hung Nguyen, Realtor at Westgate Realty Group. “All in all, MRIShomes.com diligently helps to match home buyers to real estate agents, like myself.”
Recent WAV Group findings show that national third party websites do not serve consumers well because they do not capture all active listings and fail to remove all inactive listings once they are sold or no longer available. The study also found that new listings appear on local sites such as MRIShomes.com as many as nine days before appearing on national consumer portals. A key differentiator for consumers is that MRIShomes.com is the only home search website in the Mid-Atlantic region powered by the MLS. This ensures that the data on MRIShomes.com is updated in real time, whereas syndicated channels might take days and even weeks longer to update their information.
MRIShomes.com also features the innovative “Lifestyle” search that allows home buyers to search by neighborhood and community features such as Fun and Entertainment; Shops and Stores; Family and Child Friendly; Highly Rated Schools; Pet Friendly; Median Home Price; Rural, Urban and Downtown; and, Public Transportation.
For more information, visit www.MRIShomes.com.
