Real Estate Technology News

When EXIT Realty Northwest launched in northwest Arkansas in late 2004,
it faced a number of challenges related to brand recognition, agent
recruiting and online presence.

For
the unknown and unproven brokerage, generating listings was a key
concern. Broker/owner Mike Robinson knew more and more buyers were
online and that he had to establish a strong Web presence quickly. When
the cost of a custom-built solution proved prohibitive, he turned to
Point2 Technologies, which provides online marketing software platforms
for real estate professionals.

Robinson
switched to the Point2 Agent platform several months after his company
launched, using the system for online branding, marketing and sales
lead capture. Realtors sign up for the free Point2 Agent Web site when
they join the company. Sites are free for them, but they can upgrade to
a premium site for a fee. “Most of them don’t elect to upgrade. They
keep the standard site. It’s linked to our site, and they have all
their listings appear on their site through the ‘handshake’ link with
our main site,” Robinson said.

Point2’s
handshake functionality ensures that agent Web sites are interconnected
and the broker’s listings appear on every site simultaneously. One of
the prime benefits of the system is lead generation and incubation.
When clients on the sites view an EXIT listing, they’re asked to
provide their name, phone number, e-mail address, etc. A drip e-mail
campaign is then set up. Agents can also set up their own, separate
e-mail campaign.

“We take those leads that come in and pull them off to the listing agent so he can follow up,” Robinson said.

EXIT
has an IDX link to the local MLS (running on First American’s
MLXchange), and MLS listings appear in a box on the Point2 sites.
According to Robinson, the Point2 system lets agents show more detailed
information, including more photos, than the MLS allows.

As
Robinson and his agents are doing dual entry in both systems, he said
integrated data entry would be a welcome addition to the software.

In
its first year, the brokerage reported $28 million in sales and has
doubled its Web traffic. EXIT Northwest now has 46 agents and is
quickly adding more.

Robinson
said his county was one of the fastest growing real estate markets in
2004, but in the last six months, closings have started to drop from
the same period last year. He expects the Point2 system will help him
ride out the market shift.

“Everything we see from NAR, the surveys they do and certainly our
experiences locally is there is a huge shift where homebuyers are
picking both their houses and agents away from print media and towards
the Internet. … Being out there with a good-looking, interactive Web
site — which shows clients all the houses we’ve shown them and the
houses we’ve proposed for them to look at, and where they can send us
comments — we think we’re well-positioned for continued growth. Over
the past 15 months, there’s a steady upward stream of hits,” Robinson
said.

How
might the company extend its Web capabilities in the future? Robinson
would like to start using a transaction management system (TMS), but he
wants to see it done at MLS level so that everyone in the local Realtor
association is using the same system. Otherwise, cooperating agents
won’t be able to update each other’s files and maintain an online
process.

Local Stewart
title offices encourage Realtors in the area to use its TMS system, but
as Robinson said, “We don’t close everything with Stewart. My agents
have to have two different systems — their manual system and that one.”

“I’d like to see the whole MLS go to that,” he concluded. “I’d be very excited about that.”