I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that REOs are very hot at the moment. As savvy buyers and investors are actively looking for great real estate deals, bank owned properties are practically flying off the shelf with multiple offers.

If you’re an agent trying to break into the lucrative REO market, or even if you are already selling REO properties, building a single property website to showcase each distressed home for sale is a great way to market the property.

Better yet, showcasing each foreclosure property with a unique website enables you to market YOURSELF as a savvy agent who knows how to use the power of the Internet to market properties online. This attracts bank asset managers, because it tells them that you are an Internet savvy real estate professional, who knows how to market real estate using the latest tools.

A single property website can generate a lot of traffic and give your REO listings more exposure than traditional methods of marketing real estate. In fact, it will continue to provide great value even if the property sells in just a few days: don’t forget that your sign rider showcasing the property – and you- will hang from the “for sale” sign until the property closes escrow.

Even after close of escrow, the single property website will prove useful and attract even more traffic, since the new buyer will send their family and friends to your property website to view their new home.

ListingDomains, the original and leading property website provider, has just launched several new property website templates, designed specifically for distressed properties. These websites are easy to set up and include convenient tools such as printable flyers, free syndication and free posting to Craigslist.

Visit our website today to check out the new REO templates and to add ListingDomains to your real estate marketing plan.

If Ben Stiller can do it – SO CAN YOU! I think some of us can relate to Ben’s take on social networking and trying to figure it all out.

Share your videos on Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, or other networks
12second is a cool app that makes it super easy to share your videos on Twitter and Facebook. Plus they have widgets and embed codes to share on your blog or Myspace, Tumblr, or anywhere else.

Why only 12 seconds?
Because anything longer is boring. The scientists at the 12seconds dodecaplex have conducted countless hours of research to determine the precise amount of time it takes for boredom or apathy to set in during typical Internet video viewing. Their patent pending Electro-Tear-Duct Prongers have determined that exactly 12 seconds of video is the ideal amount of time to keep anything interesting. Are you buying this? I am

Applications for Real Estate Agents
How about a 12 second video of each room – immediately uploaded to Twitter? How about a 12 second market report? Any other ideas out there?

According to a post today by the National Association of Realtors (NAR), for the first time in five years, existing-home sales have increased for four months in a row; monthly increase is the largest in 23 years. Existing home sales rose 7.2 % to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.24 million units in July from a level of 4.89 million in June, and are 5.0% above the 4.99 million-unit pace in July 2008.  Could the real estate market be recovering sooner than we thought? Real the entire story here.

What do you think of the way Google presents it’s real estate search?

How do you think this compares with Zillow or Trulia?

Interesting article in the Wall Street Journal about it. Read It Here

Single property websites are a wonderful listing tool that more and more real estate agents and brokers are using. They have very good reasons for doing so: creating a single-property website for each of your listings can help you drive significantly more traffic than using traditional tools.

Traditional vs. Modern Real Estate Marketing Tools

ListingDomains websites drive more traffic to your listings than traditional marketing tools such as virtual tours and online classified flyers, because those rely completely on other websites for generating traffic.

When you use traditional methods, you don’t get the benefits of word of mouth advertising, and you don’t get sign rider or search engine traffic.

Creating a property address domain name, coupled with the custom sign rider, is a far better real-estate marketing strategy, which can make a huge difference in the amount of traffic each listing receives.

SEO Benefits

There are significant SEO benefits to creating a single property website. First of all, having the address as the domain name means it will likely be listed very high in search engine page results. So, when someone enters “555 Main Street, Santa Rosa” in the Google search box, your 555MainStreet.com website will likely be the first result listed.

In addition, all of your single property websites link to each other and back to your own website. This can help each property website gain authority and page rank and become more visible in search engine page results. This can also enhance your own website’s search engine rankings, since there are many websites linking to it.

Social Media Benefits

You don’t just get SEO benefits when creating single property websites. You also get social networking exposure. Each single property website includes a built-in posting tool that enables you, or visitors to your website, to quickly post the listing to popular social networks such as Facebook or Twitter. Another convenient tool allows you to post the listing to the incredibly popular Craigslist.

Syndication

When you create a single property website using listingdomains.com, we syndicate your listings to all the major real estate portals, including Trulia, Vast, Google Base, Zillow, Oodle, and Yahoo Real Estate. This can help drive even more traffic to your website, and insure that your listings are advertised to a world-wide audience.

Our software is easy to use and user friendly. Creating a website usually takes less than five minutes! Visit ListingDomains today to start creating your own single property websites and increase traffic to your listings.

1. Sellers Love it
This simple but effective marketing tool will put you head and shoulders above your competition when it comes to securing the listing. Sellers love having a website dedicated entirely to selling their home. With the DEMO website feature, you can build a website absolutely FREE to show prospects at your listing presentations. Impress them and get the listing!

2. Buyers Use it
Property websites drive more traffic to your listing than virtual tours or online classified ads. Online classified flyers and virtual tours rely solely on other websites to drive traffic. They are unable to capitalize on word of mouth traffic, sign rider traffic or search engine traffic. The property address Domain Name coupled with the custom Domain Rider sign make all the difference! Not to mention the SEO benefits your agent website will receive by having all the back links from your property websites.

3. ALL INCLUSIVE!  (No Monthly Fees)
Each website comes complete with all the tools you need to market your listing online. The one time fee includes hosting for an entire year, a top level domain name (555MainStreet.com), listing syndication to all the major property portals, a printable flyer and a custom sign rider. If you don’t need a sign rider, you will receive a discount at checkout!

4. Built-In Social Networking Tools
Each website includes a built-in posting tool so you can easily add your website to your favorite social network. Better yet, your website visitors can easily add your website to their social networks as well. It’s viral marketing at it’s best!

5. Easy Posting to Craigslist
Your property website includes an html snippet of your website so you can easily cut and paste your data into an online classified site such as craigslist.org, Backpage or Ebay. Craigslist is proven to drive more traffic to your Listing Website so make sure to take advantage of this FREE service!

6. Free Listing Syndication
Service includes automatic feed of your website to the major search engines and property website portals. These portals include GoogleBase, Trulia, Zillow, and more! We add your meta tags for you to get your website the most traffic in the least amount of time.

7. Instant Leads with TEXT messaging
Your website leads are sent immediately to your text enabled cell phone. If someone fills out a form on your website, our program will convert their message to text and transmit it to your cell phone so you can follow up while your prospect is still viewing your website!

8. Property Feedback System
Send a feedback request form to agents and open house visitors soliciting their feedback about the property. This is a great tool to help you negotiate needed changes with your sellers.

9. Website Statistics
Your website statistics will tell you how many unique visitors you have had and tell you the top 5 referring search engines. What’s more, you can view your daily activity, monthly activity and total visitors. Our reporting function will allow you to email a detailed report to your sellers to show them how popular their home is!

10. User Friendly
Create a website in less than 5 minutes! Change your design layout, color and other configuration options anytime. Our program will automatically determine if the domain name of your choice is available and register it. Websites are usually up and running within a few minutes!

For a complete list of website features please visit www.ListingDomains.com

We are looking into building widgets for real estate agent to showcase their listings, blog, twitter feed, YouTube Channel etc. What do you think? Is this something that a real estate professional would find useful? These widgets can be placed on blogs, facebook, websites and so on. We need your feedback on this one.

This CNN article is not good news for those of us in the real estate industry. In it Karen Weaver from Deutsche Bank estimates that home prices in the US will fall another 14% causing 48% of homeowners to be upside down on their mortgage. What?? I thought we were bottoming out? Anyone have any comments on this?

Read the article here