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HomeGain Launches Free Property Listing Exposure For Real Estate Agents

Real estate agents used to upload their listings to the local MLS and that was it. Today you want to make sure that your listings are being seen and have good placement at sites like Google, CraigsList, Trulia and now... online lead generator giant HomeGain.

HomeGain is turning an increased focus to its home search feature. Since Nov 22 any real estate agent that registers for a free AgentEvaluator trial membership as well as all current AgentEvaluator members has been able to upload their property listings for free at HomeGain through a new beta initiative.

HomeGain says it is currently working on upgrading and enhancing the service for a larger launch in the near future when it's out of beta. This is the 2nd beta launch from HomeGain this fall. Last month they announced a free AVM tool called HomeValueCMA.com.

So... Is this new property listing exposure a good deal for real estate agents?

I think so.

In a buyers market, exposure of your listings to buyers is crucial. And there are 5 million unique visitors a month at HomeGain that can be accessed at no cost. (In real estate traffic 5 million unique visitors is huge).

Traffic from HomeGain's new property listings will not be subject to their normal referral fee at closing.

So there we have it when we begin to wrap up 2006 in terms of online real estate:

Everybody is getting into the online listing business. "Upload your listings to us and we will send you traffic!" is the message .

Almost all players seem to agree that if you don't have the listings you won't make it to the big leagues.

One can only wonder who will be next into the listing business. RealEstate.com? Zillow? Active Rain (who just turned 6 months and broke 10k registered users -big congrats!)? All are prime candidates.

We might not have seen the future of real estate marketing yet. And it might not be a more transparent real estate experience either. But it sure gives a lot of room for all the top real estate bloggers to speculate about the future.

When the industry meet at the Marriot Marquis at the Time Square in January for Brad Inman's Real Estate Connect NYC 2007 I bet the discussions will be around an old topic but with a renewed and re-energized focus:

Who got the listings? And what are they doing with them?

-Ola Edvardsson

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Posted by Ola Edvardsson on December 6, 2006 06:13 PM |

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Comments

"One can only wonder who will be next into the listing business."

Ola,

I think your question was just answered today.

Posted by: Joel Burslem | December 7, 2006 12:16 PM

Is Homegain planning on selling the leads generated from my listings that I upload to them to other realtors? I know that is their current business model. Why would I let them generate leads from my listings, only to have them sell those listings to other Realtors? Do you think agents will fall for this?

Posted by: Jake | December 7, 2006 01:04 PM

Hi Joel,

Thanks so much for stopping by! I am a huge fan of http://www.futureofrealestatemarketing.com
Thanks for all your hard work.

Yeah, it's going to be interesting next year with Zillow adding listings and probably even more players to follow.

-Ola

Posted by: Ola Edvardsson | December 7, 2006 03:58 PM

Hi Jake,

Thanks for stopping by and commenting. Truly appreciate it. :-)

Great question:

Short answer: No.

Longer answer:

I should have included a link in the entry to an example.

Here is one listing example:
http://www.homegain.com/homescout/mylistings/show_listing?listing_uid=81274&view_mode=1

Basically all listings have the contact information of the listing agent.

I think most agents (and their clients) will want to have their listings displayed on as many websites as possible.

And sites like trulia, propsmart, homegain, craigslist, google and zillow attract *huge* amounts of traffic combined.

Thanks again for commenting.

All the best.

-Ola


Posted by: Ola Edvardsson | December 7, 2006 04:13 PM

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