RealtyChat.com Blog

Hi.

I read our post and I understand your frustration but I have found a few websites that might help alleviate your pocket frustrations.

1) Housevalues.com
2) Homegain.com
3) e-Agent.com
4) newterra.net

All offer leads or clicks at a resonable rate and e-Agent and NewTerra offer websites, leads, and exclusive territories for pricing that is not in the thousands range but the hundreds range per month.

I hope this helps. We are all on your side about lead generation companies but since they buy in bulk and you and I cannot they are generating leads much cheaper than we can.

Kind of one of those situations where you have to play ball.

Ciao,

NY Realtor

I love it!!! No Website, No Farm, Never done a Mailer, No Business Plan, = Pay someone for leads who has done all of these things!!!!
~Kandra

Does any real estate agent out there been burned by companies who order BPO’s from real estate agents and either slow pay or do not pay at all?” If so, could we start a list of those companies so other realtors can stay clear of them?

Don’t forget to add 4MySales.com and Total Agent to the list above. A couple of those guys do provide marketing services and a marketing plan. However, for the money you pay for the lead only services, you can get a lot more traffic to your own site.

From my experience:
1) Housevalues.com $600 per month requiring long term contract
2) Homegain.com: Monthly fee and part of the sales commission
3) e-Agent.com They are everywhere on the net but I have not used them
4) newterra.net: Never heard of these guys
5) Total Agent: more of a contact managment service with some marketing tools
6) 4MySales: Provide a lot of the online marketing tools. I didn’t get many direct leads but they have some interesting sales tools.

Cheers
Connecticut REALTOR

I use Homegain’s Buyer Link and love it! I get people on my site and they pretty much self qualify when they request more information on a home they find in the MLS. I am converting about 20% of the inquiries and now have a full time assistant to respond to inquires and I hope to convert more. I have House Values but am not that thrilled yet. It works but is very time consuming. Only converted 2 leads in the last 8 months. Stay away from AgentConnect, Cashwon, RealEstate.com aka Lending Tree and Most Choice. I am sure there are more out there but I found those to be bogus and misleading the consumer.

Jenny,(BPOS)
I have been stiffed a few times by these guys. I would be very interested in forming a list of non / slow payers. I saw another message board that was getting into that but cant find the darn thing now. Keep in touch if you can. By yourself there is not much you can do but with alot of people togather we can fix the problem.
On the other message board I noticed a class action suit being filed against companies that do not pay. nhord@dc.rr.com

My own experience with leads driven to websites is that if you get the lead, you have something the lead wants, and you are “there” but not overbearing, you should convert a minimum of 15-20%. If you have 10 leads, you’re going to need a second job. If you 300 leads - you’ll probably make a living… Spen money on marketing your agent website = equals leads = equals income opportunity. Instead of spending, 100’s or 1,000’s on products, spend it on the most important product yourself, and your career

As a new agent I am looking for a way to build my Real Estate biz on a show string budget.
I have already been burnt once with Homevalues.com. lost $ 400
Has anyone heard of or used Proquest Technologies?
what experiences did you have, was it worth your while?

I have worked HouseValues now for 10 months @ $600/mth. So far I have been provided 140 leads BUT here’s the crunch - the vast majority of these leads are bogus (well houseValues doesn’t guarantee anything except the the contract you sign!!). Here’s a my list of folks enquiring ;

1) The Just Curious (really just curious).
2) Other RE Agents wanting to validate their
listings pricing.
3) Folks intending or engaged in FSBO.
4) Children wanting to know their parent’s worth.
5) Nosey Nieghbors.
6) Remodelers sussing out potential targets.
7) Latent divorcing couples.
8) Seller’s checking out their listing agent’s
price pitch.
9) Really dumb/weird people who have access to
the internet and make enquiries just
because…

Strange but true - I have had 3 enquiries from people that own $1M+ homes. They never listed
with me or anybody. I’ve had loads of enquiries from the absolute bottom of the market.

I’ve had one sale that came from a House Values enquiry. That means I will just about break even.
It’s a little dissapointing when my account shows that my pipeline “could” produce commission of $1,346,600. Wow! Must get back to work now and spin some more wheels>>>>>>>

Eric

I’ve been in business for 6 years in the Seattle area. I signed up with HouseValues.com in 2004, spent a lot of money, and never got any viable leads from them. It turned out to be a huge waste of money and time.
A couple of months ago I attended (as a guest) an event for agent/subscribers at a fancy hotel in downtown Seattle. A very slick promotional seminar about how great they are, and yet I was left with a really bad vibe about HV; they had most of the trappings of a cult, to me. The insincere smiles, the overly positive depictions of their miraculous products, the claims that an agent will get a lot of business by faithfully following the system, even the ‘testimonials’ ofered by other agents, none of it rang true.

I do not recommend HouseValues.com as a way of getting business. They will steal your money, and lie to you while they’re doing it.

I have been looking at proquest for leads, I have seached the web and I cannot find any info on proquest
Has anyone on this forum share with PROQUEST their experiance good or bad

I have been in business 18 years and do use homegain as part of my lead generating business. I have made money using homegain, and the referral business from the clients I have received from homegain more then makes up for the referral fee I have to pay.
Its a small part of my business but I find that its cheaper then other lead generated systems. I dont like paying a referral fee but how many of us have taken company referrals and paid a fee, its no different and the fee from homegain is normally less then a relocation fee.

Has anyone tried Reply.com?

Look, if you can hire a good webmaster, you don’t need any of those guys.

But, it’s getting tougher and tougher to do that. Lots of people jump into, then jump out of, being a Real Estate webmaster. You’d be surprised how often these guys skip.

Never hire any consultant without a recommendation.

I tried proquest and thought they were very expensive. There are other companies out there that will provide the same basic tools but a a much lower per min charge.

One company you may want to look at is tollfreelive.com if your looking at a 800 listing service. This is a full featured virtual PBX that lends itself to this type of setup.

I have used HomeGain for the past year… Both their Source for Sellers Program and Buyers link. Both programs work well but require follow up and hard work. I just recently signed up with Housevalues (it took months of research) I was freaked by the amount of negative posts it has had but after speaking to 3 local agents here in person that use it, I decided to go for it since they have been successful at it. My experience with Homegain has been great. I made over $75K my first year and kept busy. House Values has been very good also and I find the leads to be of same or better quality as Homegain. I have not had any fake leads and now that you can return leads if you dont like them, it makes it all the better. I have been working with it for 2 weeks and already have 2 buyers and a listing appt. Their marketleader program is great too. I tried Agent Connect and never closed one deal from it. Someone told me that an internet lead is an internet lead. It is what you do with it that counts. I believe this to be true. If you remain persistent (ofcourse the lead must first be real) and do follow up, if and when the time comes for that person to buy or sell, they will think of you.

One last note… My initial thought was to get the SEO done with my sight. I have not had the time to get my site content together because I have been so busy with my lead follow up. My hope is to have my website attracting buyers and sellers so I no longer have to pay for leads to be driven to my site. It does make more sense. I just don’t have the time to get it done.

How about Realty Trackers? They charge about $30/mo. plus $30/40 per lead…they say has been through a detailed check. Has anyone used them? Also, before signing up for a service, do you call and figure out how people find them on the web? I know homegain is tied into Yahoo, but just as our own website can get “lost” out there, how are they attracting these leads.

Also, has anyone found a REAL website optimizer that works?

I’ve been reading these posts and shake my head that the same complaints were being made 25 years ago. The difference being qualifying leads from your “bird dog” referrals back in the day or Online applications today.

After 27 years in the business, the last 10 working with the latest In Online marketing technology, I decided to write an eBook that would help Realtors realize the potential of THEIR OWN WEBSITE.

Paying these lead generating websites is expensive and unless you do alot of follow up and coddling you might as well park your car at the end of a street and knock on doors!

Every realtors website has the potential to do EXACTLY what the big boys are doing and if you want leads you can get them without paying for them from a third party, AND they can be higher quality leads because you control the qualifying.

I take tried and true methods of prospecting that have been done for years and apply them with todays technology. I also show the reader how to drive targeted traffic to your website and how to convert them into a customer.

Creative marketing ideas utilizing available technology to help earn you more revenue and save valuable time with some simple techniques.

It’s not that Realtors always do things the hard way, but that the entire industry has been slow to adapt to the new reality of the power of the internet for their business. I show agents in straight simple language how to monetize their websites and improve their professional image.

I realize that I may be touching on some very sensitive “nerves” with this post. Now that we got that out of the way….

Close your eyes and imagine this: It’s Saturday and you’re in the last hour of a four hour open house. No people have shown up. No people in sight either. You thought this would be one of those listings that would just fly off the market… eight weeks ago! Not to mention that one deal that fell through yesterday, two days before closing. You’ve got to do something!! All your marketing is not working…it seems like nothing is going your way. You’ve really got to do something!!!!…

Stop right there! That’s exactly the target market of every “lead” generation company in every industry. An ambitious professional that really needs to do something about their slow business. You go to their website, they promise good, fresh, solid, double verified, triple gold plated, leads. Actual customers just waiting in the sidelines for your call to go look at some homes. They’re already pre approved too. Look! On the website, Melanie is smiling after having closed millions of transactions using this very lead system. And its just $60 a lead; that’s two dollars a day. You can afford that. You spent more than that on coffee at Starbucks each day. What’s more the salesperson said that I should expect to convert about 15% of the leads. This could pay for itself for a whole year with just one deal.

Reality Check! Leads just don’t work! Think about it rationally like you had millions of dollars in the bank. What’s the source of these leads? How are they getting them? Oh that’s right, the customer went there to check how much their house was worth for free. Doesn’t that mean they want to sell? Uhm.. no! That means they were bored and saw this commercial on TV about a free value check and decided to give it a try. Moreover, think about this. If you had a system that could get you thousands of buyer and seller leads, wouldn’t you:

1. keep it to yourself
2. ditch the lead business and get into real estate?!

Lead companies don’t sell leads. They sell hope. And if you understand that you will understand why leads don’t work. Instead, think about what your customers are looking for and give it to them and you might just come up with your own system for generating actual organic leads that work.

From my Moguls in Progress Blog at

http://www.signaturehouston.com/blog-3.htm