I was paying more every month to have my listings enhanced (more photo's etc.) through Realtor.com and after a year of paying for the service, I realized I didn't get the exposure I expected and decided not to renew. I'll use the money to put towards generating referrals through my sphere of influence (family, friends etc). It's so great Point2Agent allows you to track where your referrals are coming from, otherwise I never would have known how few hits I actually received through Realtor.com!

My broker has a deal with Realtor.com and it allows to enhance our listings at much lower price. I agree with Elisa I haven't received any large hits or leads from the site but it does help me as a great tool for my listings appointment.

A week back I was at a listings appt. and the sellers are IT people they sat down with their laptops on all my internet advt. venues. They were impressed with the point2homes & Realtor.com.

I am canceling my Realtor.com account also. Just don't get the exposure I do with P2.

I renewed my enhanced listings with Realtor.com to use as a marketing tool for listing presentations. This is the start of my 2nd year, so far I have not recieved any leads from my expenditure $$$.

When doing a listing presentation it helps tremendously to produce the list of all the websites that Realtor.com shares our listings with. They even supply the template for the flyer with all the websites and the logos.  And bringing a copy of a the weekly statistics graph so you can show the seller that they will receive a report showing them how many views they are receiving, and that you will email this report to them weekly, also might help set you apart from the other agents.  Do I think it helps get a listing?  Yes indeed.  Does it provide many leads..

very few.

While I can track several home sales directly to my enhanced listings at r.com, I will not be renewing this year. Their website is not user friendly for adding listings and for the consumer. There are newer, better and less expensive avenues now available for advertising your listings including Point2, syndication partners and others.

I pay for enhanced listings.  Like everyone else has said, it is great for listing appointments.  

I have put on my scrolling text "$100 gas card when you buy or sell with Joe Real Estate" on all my listings and have had no one call me on it.  

But here is an idea.  Realtor.com gets tons of traffic.  Put your personal web site address on the banner for each of your listings and put the homes website address in the marketing remarks.  That way you drive traffic from Realtor.com to your personal website.  You then have a captive audience.

With Great Enthusiasm,

Joe Leksich

With Realtor.com it is the exposure your listing gets.

You may not get that many direct hits to your site but a ton of people use it to start their search and still use it even when they are working with an agent.  Maybe they are emailing your listing to their agent instead of contacting you.

I have always used the enhanced listings and also have 1 featured slot in a zipcode that I work.

If you do not have the enhanced llstings you only have one picture and we all know people want to see pictures.

Steve & Sharon

the price is based on the number of listings you have over a 12 month period.  I think the first cut off is 1-10 and then 11-25  .

I can not remember what the price was   I think around 175-200 for the first level . the second level was much higher.  You have to call them to get the prices as I do not believe they post them .

I have found it works for me.  As I said earlier the site gets huge traffic- and the only reason to go there is to look at homes!

I pay like $1300 a year for mine.

Hi, all;

We learned an amazing little thing about Realtor.com yesterday; they count images on a page as hits! In other words, if someone visits a Realtor.com page and their are 10 pictures n it, they count that as 10 hits!

Realtor.com CLAIMS 7 million hits a month. Calculated that way, their true visitor total is probably closer to ONE million; with 1.3 million members!

Heck, my little client base of a few hundred Realtors got over 2 million real hits last month!

I learned this from an impeachable source, who also informed us that NAR has set aside $20 million for a web analytics program to track visits to individual listings. BREAKING NEWS: Our reporting system offers that now, free.

Realtor.com is clearly a very expensive alternative to Point2 NLS. Guess who gets my vote as the best place to be? Yup. Point2 NLS. Thought that might be interesting to you all.

Best to you all,

Mike Parker

mparker@theBlackwaterCG.com

My office signed as a group for enhanced listings and as Joe mentioned, our Regional trainers recommend that we add our own personal sites somewhere on the listing to pull viewers away from R.com and onto our sites. I just added a new listing along with a Sunday tour which also adds a neat little Open House graphic to the listing when a large number are being viewed. It gives the listing even more exposure besides the banner headline. Maybe I will post open houses way out in the future just to keep the graphic on the listing!

If the office as a whole did not sign up for enhanced listings, I would not have participated since it brings very few actual leads. R.com likes to display a graph showing how many hits your listing received but it is only the number of consumers whose criteria matched your listing info, not that they ever viewed your listing. It's just a lot of 'puffing' in my opinion.

My contract with R.com is almost up and I will not be renewing ... I have received hardly any leads ... none that would actually turn into real business and for the round $1300/year that I have been paying, it's a waste of money at this point. Instead, I will be uploading the P2 virtual tours to my listings on R.com ... $20/tour vs $1300/ 11 - 25 listings ... that's a nobrainer!

Mike, Realtor.com isn't being deceptive by counting images as "hits". Images have ALWAYS been counted as hits since my very first site design project in 1994.

The problem is that few people know that ANY file downloaded to their browser counts as a hit, whether it's an html file, an mp3 file, an image... whatever. They are all "hits."

However, Realtor.com could be considered at fault for using the term "hit" without explaining its meaning.

"Unique visitors" and "return visitors" are what they should be measuring and advertising; that would be very easy by simply adding Google Analytics to their site.

I use it, every time I list something it goes in with the 20 billion other listings that takes decades to find.

Other then that I don't use it at all.

Hope you found this post helpful

I added a Sunday tour on R.com for the first time and liked the way it made the listing stand out with the added Open House tab smack dab in the middle of the listing. It's still overpriced, though!

From June 19, 2006 - June 19,2007 I received 109 direct referrals (website clicks) from Realtor.com per my Point2agent ultra stats. I was paying $280 per month for a Featured Homes spot as well as additional money for enhanced/showcased listings.  This comes out to more than $30.00 per my website visitor where I may or may not have gotten the potential buyer's info.

You do the math. I cancelled my subscription to Realtor.com's Featured Homes, but currently use the enhanced listings only because recently our broker made a deal with Realtor.com that is very cheap.

Michael,

lucky you! I've had my own enhanced listings contract with Realtor.com for almost two years now and I have yet to see a direct website clickthrough coming to my website. I have never seen my ultra stats showing any activity coming from Realtor.com.