Single property websites are appealing to sellers, informational to potential buyers, and a great selling point on a listing presentation.  Especially websites with a direct URL (i.e., www.123Anywhere.com), single property websites are also handy for marketing on postcards, flyers and print ads.

For example, iHouse offers their Spotlight product on a volume price model (i.e., more website credits you purchase, the less each costs) starting at $99 for one website (includes domain name).  AgencyLogic offers a similar PowerSites solution starting at $50 per site license (also includes domain name).  Single Property Sites offers their product on a monthly subscription basis, based on the number of active sites per month. For example, their “Best Value” package allows up to 5 active sites per month and comes with a pricetag of $29/month. A domain name will cost an additional $12/year per property. 

This can be quite pricey, especially if you’re a top selling agent. For example, I have a client who currently has 20 active listings and another 3 that are under contract, taking back-up offers, so marketing continues.  In his case, the tools above would cost:

• iHouse Spotlight:  25 activation package = $1,750
• AgencyLogic PowerSite: 25 site pack = $875
• SinglePropertySite: $112/month for 25 active sites (equivalent to $1,344/year) + $11.99/domain name (another $275.77 to market his 23 listings) = $1619.77

But …. do you really need to spend the big bucks to achieve the same thing?  NO!  You don’t.  Here’s the alternative solution that will only cost $9.17 per year per listing per year.

Chances are, as a real estate professional, you already have an agent website.  Also, chances are, you have the ability to display your listings on that website, with the further ability to add items to those listings such as a virtual tour link, images, custom descriptive text, etc. Also, your website probably already has a method to contact you for more information about the displayed listing.  If your website doesn’t offer these basic tools, I would first suggest investing your marketing dollars here.  One great tool for this is AdvancedAccess.

After you’ve created the listing on your website, that webpage will hold a unique URL. To find that unique URL, look at your webpage using the public view (i.e., not in edit/administrator mode) — simply go to your website and use your navigation to get to this webpage. When this webpage is displayed, right-click your mouse on an “empty” whitespace area of the webpage (i.e., not on an image, link or other element). A mini-dialogue box will appear … choose “properties”.  Within this new box, about half-way down, you’ll see an Address (URL) section that will look something like this: http://www.essential-admin.com/portfolio.html.  You’ll want to select this URL address by placing your mouse at the beginning of the URL and holding down your left mouse key as you drag it across the complete URL so the whole URL turns black. While it’s black, copy it to your clipboard by simply pressing your Ctrl+C keys (together/simultaneously) on your keyboard. You won’t see anything happen but it’s just been copied to your Windows clipboard. 

Now, open up a Word document and paste this URL (i.e., either select the Edit/Paste command from the menu or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+V). I recommend having a document where you keep all your property URLs, so this will be your first entry in that document. Make sure you label it with the property description ;o).

Now, go to GoDaddy and purchase a domain.  I recommend selecting something that will be easy to market, such as 123anywhere.com. Once purchased, you use their “Forward Domains” menu to “point” this new domain to your existing webpage. Just copy (Ctrl+C) the URL text from your Word document you created above, and then paste (Ctrl+V) it into the GoDaddy forwarding box.  Save and you’re done. Give it a couple hours to update. When ready, type the new domain name into your Internet browser and you should see that property page display.

If you’d like to further make it display nicely, “mask” the domain when you’re setting up the fowarding (there’s another easy option in that menu for this). If you “mask” the domain, when a visitor types in www.123anywhere.com, their browser address bar will say www.123anywhere.com instead of the website URL on your website.

Using this method has the potential of saving you a lot of money in two ways:
1) You only pay less than $10 for a domain name.
2) You save time … whether that be your own valuable time or that of a VA or assistant … in creating the webpage. For example, chances are, you already either add or “enhance” the listing on your website once, so it’s already there. If you use a secondary tool to display the property page, you (or your VA/Assistant) have to enter the information a second time into their system.

If these steps are a bit daunting, but you’d still love to take advantage of the cost savings provided by this alternative method, contact a virtual assistant to help you. If you need assistance locating a good one, contact me and I’ll be glad to help.