Ubertor Real Estate Blog

Neighbourhood or niche websites are a great way to target a specific farming area. The key is building a website that provides value to your visitors, shares your knowledge on a specific topic, showcases properties for sale and most importantly depicts you as an expect in the area.

Do you want to do more business in a certain type of property or a certain area?

Here are 4 examples of real estate agents marketing themselves to a certain area and in one case to a certain property type:

www.loftsvancouver.com
Reid Dewson and Ed Gramauskas have been working a niche website for years. Their website showcases all lofts available for sale within the Vancouver area. Plus they have building information, upcoming projects, plus much more. It is by far the most reliable website for lofts in Vancouver.

www.yaletownpark.ca
Ian Watt has 6 niche websites all targeted towards a specific area or property type. YaletownPark.ca is dedicated to the Yaletown Park condo development that has just gone up in Yaletown, downtown Vancouver. Here are his other sites - www.vancouver-penthouse.com, www.electricavenue.ca, www.whistler-homes.com, www.vancouver-townhouse.com and www.ianwatt.ca

www.kitsilanohouses.com
Marty Pospischil runs 3 websites. His martyhomes.com main website which is all about his real estate business but he runs kitsilanohouses.com and assignmentsvancouver.com (under construction). The Kitsilano website has rental information, properties for sale, restaurants, businesses, schools, plus much more.

www.pointgreynow.com
Ken Wyder is a great example of a website put together in only a few months and is seeing excellent results. Ken has adding lots of great information about Point Grey including the real estate listings that area available in that area.

What to see some results?

- If you Google “Lofts Vancouver” or “Vancouver Lofts” you will see that loftsvancouver.com comes up #1 under both terms.

- If you search “Yaletown Park” in Google, Yahoo and MSN you will see Ian’s website come up 2, 5, and 3 respectively.

- In Yahoo and MSN when you search “Kitsilano Houses for Sale” Marty’s website comes up number 1 in both search engines.

- Searching “point grey real estate” brings up Ken Wyder’s website on the first page of Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Would you like to get started?

We can get you up and running in 60 seconds for $67.00/month - no setup fee. ($57.00 for your website and $10.00 for your autofill category of listings) Give us a call at 604-264-1999 to learn more about creating a website for a neighbourhood or niche that you want to farm.

Giving the user the ability to save a search is nothing new in the internet world. Many property searches, including ours, gives the user the ability to save their search if they wish to do so.

More powerful than a “save this search” function is the ability to autofill specific real estate listings directly into a website. Local search is being pushed by everyone from Google to Yahoo, to even the Yellow Pages. Local is everything… if the user has found your site, you and them already know what they are looking for.

As an example, take Ian Watt, he has a website called www.electricavenue.ca. Now, you can assume that any visitor to this website is interested in Condos or Townhouses available within the Electric Avenue development in downtown Vancouver. So having a generic search is not important. You know what they want and an auto fill category (AFC) can give it to them. On this site, if you click on “Listings (for sale)” you are going to get every condo and townhouse in Electric Avenue that is currently listed for sale. So you are basically, saving the search for the user without making your visitor go through the work of creating the search that they want, and saving it.

Now, this functionality only works with MLS systems that we are integrated with and with Boards that permit it. But for those that can do it, the power of this is huge.

If you Google the term - electric avenue real estate - you will see Ian’s site come up #2

Local, niche specific websites are key to doing well on the internet. Have a look at Ian Watt’s collection of websites, all of which take advantage of an AFC:

Yaletown Park
Vancouver Penthouses
Vancouver Townhouses
Electric Avenue
Whistler Homes (new)
Ian Watt Main Website

If you have any questions about AFC’s or what can be done in your area, please feel free to contact me or your sales representative.

Just got back from the Vancouver Real Estate Board Trade Show at the Westin Bayshore in downtown Vancouver. Bit of a rainy day for the event so the view that the Bayshore has was nowhere to be seen. Here is what it should have looked like:

The event seemed to go well for everyone involved. We had a booth at the show. It was great to chat with many of our existing clients as well as meet many new Realtors. Dara from RealtySupport.ca and Darryl from MyHomeTours.ca were at our booth for a while showcasing their products and services. All in all, a great day.

A few agents have been told by their managers that they need to have their full company name on every page of their website according to the real estate board. The Ubertor system allows you to do this yourself and you have a few different options of how to do it.
1. In the Preferences of your control panel you can update this information
2. In your Content Manager you can add this information to every page
3. Create a page about your office and label the page your office name. (ex: RE/MAX Westcoast)

Make sure that you are following the rules of your board. If you have any questions ask your manager to review your website.

Attached is the MLS Reciprocity Agreement that you must fill out in order to activate the Property Search on your website. Once you have filled out the form please fax it back to the Real Estate Board at 604-730-3101. Remember to put our company name on the top right corner of the agreement so they’ll know to contact us once everything is complete. It usually takes them 2 weeks to get back to us, once they do, we will set it up on your site. There is a monthly fee you have to pay the Board for this function on your site. Please contact them to find out the cost as it all depends on the company you work for.

MLS Reciprocity Agreement