With the current real estate market slump, there are more motivated sellers than ever before who are looking to get rid of their houses.
Most these are profitable deals, but at the same time, lots of them cannot be profitable deals for the majority real estate investors.
With this proliferation in the number of deals available on the market, most real estate investors end up with more phone calls from motivated sellers looking to sell their houses. Needless to say, most of these phone calls cannot yield any deals at all.
You must therefore filter time wasters from real deals without wasting valuable time and effort, while still attracting all the good deals from motivated sellers. And why not do it hands-off if you can?
This is why you need a good real estate investing web site, which is a essential necessity of any real estate investing business.
At the same time, in the current world, every person expects every legitimate business to have a web site. Most people looking to buy or sell their house start their search from the internet even before they consult a professional such as a real estate agent.
These days, every person in America is has access to the internet. Most motivated sellers would rather to submit their house information in privacy over the internet.
Providing them with a link to your web site as well as a phone number gives them the choice to contact you through their most convenient method.
You must therefore have a real estate investing web site that is informative, efficient and interactive and one that makes your work easier and fun.
Here are a few basic rules you must follow in order to get the best real estate investors web site:
1: Privacy
You must have control of your web site and its contents. The web site must belong to you. Especially you must be able to host it where you want without unnecessary limitations where only you controls access to your data. If the company provides hosting, then capability to control the hosting account and your web site is a must.
Try to avoid companies that ask you to sign up for free, build up your web site with their templates, then pay them a monthly fee. If the web site must run on their server, be careful. In reality they own your web site for a monthly fee.
2) The web site must be database-driven
It must be able to collect information into a database and allow you to manipulate it any way you want, such as sending email, importing and exporting data and so on.
For example, when a motivated seller comes to your web site, they should be able to submit their property information effortlessly.
When you are selling houses prospective buyers must be able to sign up into your buyers list effortlessly.
If at all possible, when someone submits information on the web site, you should receive an email and that information should be logged into the database.
2) It must be interactive
The ability to interact with visitors is a crucial, necessary element of a modern web site, also particularly necessary in your real estate investing business.
You must be able to collect the information you want from motivated sellers, house buyers, or any other visitors that you target in your real estate business.
Your motivated sellers must not only be able to submit their houses for sale, but must also be able to leave testimonials, a crucial element to profitable real estate investing.
A modern real estate investors web site also needs to be web 2.0 compliant. Especially, it should allow you to share houses on social media web sites like Twitter, Facebook, Myspace and others.
Even if you do not personally use these services, allowing your visitors (who also include other real estate investors) to share your properties with their friends on social networking media serves to share your properties wider to more people resulting to a quick sale. In today’s world, most real estate investors use social networking sites.
3) It must be simple, well designed and informative
You do not want your web site to look like every other real estate investors web site out there. The web site you buy should offer a big selection of designs to choose from and the ability to customize the designs to suit your real estate investing needs.
You should be able to keep your brand such as logo or even a custom look if you need to. If at all possible, you should not have to pay extra to choose any design you want.
Equally important, nobody wants to go through a maze to find out how you buy and sell houses, or how you run your real estate investing business regardless of your business model. A good real estate investing web site must be simple and informative enough for motivated sellers to submit their information on the web site instead of making a phone call thereby pre-screening and pre-negotiating deals for you.
The web site must seek to convert your target audience, such as pre-educate motivated sellers so they see you as the only professional qualified to solve their house problems. It must convince them to submit their information right there instead of making a phone call saving you lots of time.
When you are selling your properties, it must serve to present them in an easy, friendly manner so a potential buyer can tell in a few minutes if it’s a deal for them or not.
4) It must be optimized for search engines
Motivated sellers must be able to find you on the internet. So must house buyers or other leads that you target in your business. Your real estate investors web site must therefore be well optimized for search engines.
Targeting your local market on the search engines is especially important if you buy and sell properties in your local market
5) It must be easy to maintain
Most real estate investors are not computer geeks. A good real estate investing web site must be easy to run and control. If at all possible, the web site should be controlled from a virtual back office (admin panel). The front end should completely free of maintenance.
6) The web site must be easily adaptable and flexible
There is no one size fits all does in real estate investing. Each business is unique, and a good real estate investors web site must adaptable to your current real estate investing model you might have without major changes.
You must be able to create new pages, add or change content easily, and create any forms to gather any type of information you choose.
You should have the flexibility to choose designs and business model easily without major changes.
Most real estate investors also have other side businesses, such as being a mortgage broker, credit restoration, Realtors, etc. Your real estate investing web site must allow you to supplement these services along with investing in real estate if you want to.
7) It should offer automation capability
Automation is a essential necessity for marketing on the internet and making the running of your business easier.
A good real estate investing web site must allow you to create unlimited follow-up autoresponders to manage email campaigns for your motivated sellers, buyers lists or any other lists you manage on your web site.
For example, you can set up a Thank You message to motivated sellers after they submit their information, so that once they submit their house information, they get an instant message that says something like Thank you for your enquiry. We will get in touch with you within 24 hours or something like that.
Similarly, you should be able to create automated reminders to remind you of any important events on your real estate investing business. Your busy schedule should not get in the way of important follow-ups so crucial to successful real estate investing.
8 ) It must be inexpensive
Unfortunately, most real estate investing products are un-necessarily expensive. If you do not get hit with a big upfront invoice, you stuck with a big monthly fee.
The real estate investing web site you choose must not offer these constraints, otherwise it quickly becomes a liability instead of than an asset for your real estate investing business.
The web site must allow you to install it and run it from any web hosting account you choose.
9) It must offer free lifetime support and upgrades
When you buy your real estate investing web site, you must get free lifetime support and upgrades.
If a web site charges for everything they do for you, run the other way. Free support must be a essential part of any real estate investing business.
These are just a few tips to look out for when shopping for a real estate investing web site. There are many other minor things but if you abide by these basic rules, you should be happy with the web site you get.
In one sentence, the real estate investing web site you choose must make your business fun and simple to run.
Recommended Real Estate Investing Web Site
RealEstateInvestorsWebSites.net is no doubt the best service out there. Not only does it meet all the above qualifications, they offer lots of other features not included here that will no doubt take your real estate investing business to the next level.
