REAL ESTATE AGENTS CAN’T FIND DOMAIN NAME VALUES
December 4th, 2007 Posted in Real Estate Domains
Let’s salute the mighty real estate business. Look around, you’ll see their agents’ photos on bus benches, flyers, window brochures, phone directories, and on all over the internet. Everytime you do a search for a property to buy, tons of real estate agents, brokers, businesses and services pop up. Search “real estate” on google and you get 46.6 MILLION PAGES. Man, that’s a lot of results!
However, just for a half-hour study session, (make believe you’re in Professor Stephen Douglas’ college class studying “domain niches that sell”), dig deep into your real estate google search and locate all the generic descriptive domains representing either the land area of the real estate agent/broker/business, or the personal name of the realtor/broker. I did this and found the following:
First 20 Google results for “REAL ESTATE”:
- 13 websites representing newspapers, magazines, or subdomains of search engines such as AOL, YAHOO and MSN
- 3 websites representing large real estate or mortgage companies: Realtor.com, GMACrealestate.com, Century21.com
- 2 websites in the netherworld: eBay, Wikipedia
- 2 websites that killed all other categories with their direct navigation (name direction) domain names defining their business: RealEstate.com (LendingTree, LLC), and RealEstateWebmasters.com
Only these last TWO domains showed generic descriptive domain qualities. That’s 10% of the top twenty search results for “real estate”. I’m not trying to prove SEO techniques here, because it’s obvious the most powerful companies are spending a lot of money on SEO to keep themselves up in the top twenty. However, there were over six domains that were subdomains of more popular domains, such as AOL, YAHOO, MSN and others.
Digging down into the top 100 results, I found the majority of websites were newspapers, with a blog or two, and realestatebook.com. Again, out of 1oo results, there wasn’t ONE domain name representing a city, or a geo-related real estate domain name, or the name of a real estate agent.
Most of the listings for “real estate” on Google came from the massive amount of listings that newspapers and magazines feature online.
I’m sure if you searched for more geo-specific real estate locations, that would change. However, what about properties and homes described in “marketing terms”, such as “beautifulhomes.com” (a landing page provided by Enom’s servers at dns1.name-services.com, which usually is the default landing page after someone has failed to renew their domain and Enom purchases it. The domain whois is listed as a privacy listing); “beachfronthomes.com” (a landing page, but nice design by TrafficZ!) or “luxuryhomes.com” (a built-out website, nicely done!).
But why aren’t any of these descriptive real estate domains owned by the big real estate firms? Why aren’t the names of small to large development areas owned as domain names by the firms developing these areas? Even subdivisions of suburbs are overlooked by real estate agents and developers.
As far as a real estate agent not owning their own name to promote their services and their website, that is just a no-brainer. Which brings me to this ironic question: Why is it that the real estate industry is among the last of the industries to make the leap into buying up generic descriptive domain names? You’d think they would understand “internet location” before anyone else!
I have ten real estate domains, or variations thereof, I could probably nab right now right out of the basket. However, I’d like to see some movement in the real estate industry towards the domain name market that directly applies to them. One of the fastest developing areas in Southern California is Norco in Riverside County, and I own “NorcoHome.com”. I’ve exhausted all attempts to sell this category killing domain to real estate agents or development companies.
Other domainers and myself already own some decent real estate domains, and no matter how I attempt to market them, the agents or companies don’t see the value of “LOCATION” on the internet. Hope that changes soon, or real estate businesses might just find themselves “priced out of the market.”
3 Responses to “REAL ESTATE AGENTS CAN’T FIND DOMAIN NAME VALUES”
By Ed on Dec 18, 2007
“Which brings me to this ironic question: Why is it that the real estate industry is among the last of the industries to make the leap into buying up generic descriptive domain names? You’d think they would understand “internet location” before anyone else!”
Hi Stephen,
I hear ya!
You would think they understand it, but for some reason they remain clueless.
“Other domainers and myself already own some decent real estate domains, and no matter how I attempt to market them, the agents or companies don’t see the value of “LOCATION” on the internet. Hope that changes soon, or real estate businesses might just find themselves “priced out of the market.”
I tried to market a niche real estate portfolio recently, domains with type-in traffic exceeding 350+ U.V and growing.
Now 350+ doesn’t seem much, but if you take account for the prices the average property sells…1 million GBP!
You would be surprised if you would after they show initial interest to form a business relationship…
And tell you: As of now we don’t see how the domains could stand on their own to be of use to us.
But still keep on advertising on Adwords and pay dollars for a single click!
I provide that traffic for free for them which is only a add-on bonus for them and additional potential business.
They could either make an arrangement with me to provide a fee on a closed sale or outright buy the domains.
But no action from their part to jump on the opportunity…
So i know exactly where you’re coming from Stephen.
It will probably take years for the Marketing & Sales teams realize the strength of direct navigation domains, but by then it’s too late for most of them!!
By Ed on Dec 18, 2007
Oh, and that is 350+ UV per month which will be if the current trend keeps growing 1000+ easily per month.
By Mark on Dec 28, 2007
Very interesting points. Over the last few decades many businesses, with a huge variety of products and services, have failed at selling to the real estate industry.
The issue in RE is not so much the quality of your product/service, but how you sell it. This is a hugely fragmented industry where the agent at the street level controls the vast majority of the marketing spend. There are no easy channels to sell through – not the broker, not the multi office owner, not the franchise. The only way is one at a time to the agent.
The broker/owner/franchise has little incentive to spend beacuse the agent keeps most of the commission. In 2000 I was at a RE industry tech conference and Dave Liniger, the founder of Re/Max, was a keynote speaker. He rambled on for an extended period of time bashing the Internet and all of the various RE start-ups it was sprouting (including mine). His basic message was, “we don’t need the Internet, consumers don’t want it, real estate is local, blah, blah, blah”. I was really embarrassed for the guy, he made a fool of himself. Of course, since then Re/Max has seen the light.
Anyway, I know how to sell to them and I’m building a portfolio. If you have local geo or quality generic real estate domains to sell, please email me the details.
356racer (at) gmail dot com.
XXXXXStephenXXXXXX
Thanks Mark for your informative response. It’s amazing that your comments smack of the truth. From my own experiences, I’ve actually been on phone calls with top real estate agents who were arguing about why they would need to own the very domains that represent the LOCATIONS and even DEVELOPMENT NAMES that they are selling. It seems they are so busy in driving around trying to sell face to face, that they forget that at least 50% of their buyers have checked out the homes first online. I think that percentage may even be higher. Anyone have some bona fide statistics from a reliable source on how many homebuyers check out the homes first online? Email me Mark, I have about 30 high profile RE domains you might be interested in brokering. I give 20% commission.