Julie Gray-Roller, a real estate consultant for Long & Foster Real Estate in Reston, Va., has been a Homes.com client for five years. Initially signing up for a free account, Gray-Roller decided to sign up for the company’s Local Connect product after being approached by a number of clients who were seeking assistance in locating both rentals and properties to purchase.
“In the last three years, I subscribed to four or five real estate databases, all of which were very expensive and didn’t give me the return on investment to make continued participation worth the expense to maintain the accounts,” says Gray-Roller. “But with Homes.com, I purchased additional zip codes for leads at a reasonable cost, and I was able to find success in converting the leads to actual purchasers.”
That’s the beauty of Homes.com Local Connect. It instantly brings you property inquiries from active buyers and sellers right when they’re ready to engage. Once you obtain a zip code, the service sends consumer property inquiries immediately, displays links to your Homes.com profile and highlights endorsements right next to your name. Taking this one step further, prospective buyers can easily call by clicking on your phone number directly from any Local Connect ad.
The product provides a clear competitive advantage to real estate professionals that includes prominent advertising on the listing detail page and contact form of basic Homes.com listings. To ensure consumer inquiries are directed back to the listing agent or broker, they’re prominently displayed as the legal representative of the homeowner.
Launched last year, the advertising program allows real estate agents and brokers to target local homebuyers by bridging the gap between consumers searching for their next home and real estate professionals targeting active homebuyers and sellers.
Gray-Roller’s favorite thing about Local Connect is its ability to connect with an informed client who is prepared to begin the purchasing process.
“It’s the most important aspect of this program,” Gray-Roller says. “Also, I find that first-time buyers do a lot of research before contacting an agent, and Homes.com is a familiar search engine for these buyers.”
Another impressive feature centers around the fact that plenty of research is done ahead of time so that the leads being passed along to agents aren’t just generic and up for anyone to grab.
“I appreciate the fact that the leads Homes.com sends me have been chosen from previous research on properties, showing that they’ve done some research on real estate,” says Gray-Roller. “More and more, we’re finding that millennial buyers are familiar with localities, types of properties in various communities and have even taken steps to get approved to purchase.”
In Gray-Roller’s opinion, Homes.com is an excellent source for both real estate professionals and their clients. “Listing information is easily located, and clients are able to contact real estate professionals to help with purchases or rentals.”
For more information about advertising on Homes.com, visit connect.homes.com.
