Homes.com Helps Florida Real Estate Professional Make a Positive Impression in his Local Market and Connect With Qualified Leads
When you talk with real estate agent Joel Drapeau of Melbourne Beach—smack in the middle of Florida’s Space Coast where second and vacation homeowners mix with long-time residents who still support the area’s aerospace and defense industries—there’s a tendency to make comparisons.
In the eight months he’s been working with Homes.com’s City Sponsor and Lead Concierge programs, his business has taken off like a rocket.
“The Melbourne area is like no other spot along the Florida coast,” says Drapeau, who has been in the business since 2006. Having grown up in real estate, his mom began her career as an agent in New Hampshire nearly 45 years ago, spending three-plus “semi-retired” years working with her son in the southern Florida market.
Searching for new ways to connect with qualified leads in the spring of 2020, Drapeau decided to invest in a couple of zip codes with Homes.com. And when his first Homes.com lead came in and turned into a $750,000 sale, that was all the proof he needed to add more zip codes.
It was around this same time that Drapeau was opening the first Compass Real Estate office on the Space Coast. With a concentration in Florida metro areas, Drapeau was motivated to make an impression with the Compass brand in Melbourne Beach, with plans for a second office in Vero Beach.
“It’s a booming market here, and our inventory right now is ridiculously low. Properties are going for way beyond asking price and listings are immediately generating multiple offers,” says Drapeau, whose latest closing on a $525,000 property also came from a Homes.com lead.
“So far, all of my leads have been buyers, and most are local or in-state clients who visit my website and connect with me,” says Drapeau, who recently helped another Homes.com referral locate and fall in love with a local historic home surrounded with fruit trees on a lot twice the size of what she hoped to get.
“We help the people who need help right away, and we set up a system to help those who are on the fence find the right property when they’re ready,” adds Drapeau.
The process is even easier now that Drapeau has added Homes.com’s Lead Concierge service to the mix.
“The Homes.com concierge service takes one more thing off my plate so that opportunities aren’t missed if I’m handling something else. Internet clients are getting barraged with a lot of contacts all at once, so the first to act usually gets the business. It’s all about making that immediate response,” explains Drapeau.
“The more I work with Homes.com, the more my face and brand are coming up with folks looking for property,” he adds.
“Homes.com has lived up to everything they say they are going to do,” concludes Drapeau, who hasn’t had any customer service or platform issues. “I look forward to continuing to grow with them.”
For more information, please visit marketing.homes.com.
John Voket is a contributing editor to RISMedia.
