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Prudential Launches ”Online Seller Advantage” with Yahoo
Posted by Marlow Harris under Real Estate
[3] Comments
Prudential Real Estate is offering a new program with Yahoo Real Estate called the “Online Seller Advantage programâ€. It’s designed to let sellers’ agents convey market information to their clients via email. Sellers will be able to receive a range of consumer-related and competitive market data.
The statistics, based on online property searches at Yahoo! Real Estate and Prudential.com sites and local property data, describe how often a client’s property appeared on search results; how often the property was viewed in a detailed format; how many viewers saved the property information; and discusses price changes of homes in the immediate neighborhood and status changes of other for-sale properties in the area. Clients also receive information about new property listings in the area.
Who would pay for that? That’s nuts. A good listing agent will stay in touch with their clients by email or with a telephone call for FREE.
I don’t think you understand. It’s part of the service. It’s one of the things that seperates Prudential from brokers like yours. While you may wish to play phone tag daily with your clients, you still could not tell them what kind of activity their listing is recieving on the Internet. You might be able to count “hits” but you couldn’t tell what kind of hits they were, where they came from, what the consumer did with that information, etc. It’s no better than a newspaper ad. It’s about information, and today, information and activity are on the Internet. Consequently, that’s where the client is. I haven’t run into a single CLIENT that isn’t excited to have this information. Understandably, it makes brokers and agents not affiliated with Prudential uneasy. With about 65% of all Internet users launching through Yahoo!, it’s a service that can’t be duplicated. If I had to choose, and compensation rates were relatively similar, this would be a no-brainer. I’d choose Prudential. 98% National name recognition, major corporate relocation resources, and now an exclusive partnership with Yahoo! can’t be touched. National exposure with Local Expertise, Yahoo! Real Estate sign riders, prime billing for Prudential listings on Yahoo! real Estate, and now regular updates on Internet activity. Can your broker do that? Hmm. I didn’t think so.
Perhaps they’re larger nation-wide, but I don’t think Prudential is on anyone’s radar here in the Seattle area. They only have 4 offices here and have a very small market share compared to Windermere, Coldwell Banker and ReMax. But that’s beside the point. Upon re-reading the service, it does appear to be just one more gimmick to separate real estate agents and brokers from more money in the pursuit of leads and market share.