optimizing website real estate

Ironic that some of the sites out there selling real estate are also some of the websites who make the best of their website. I've been working with a local real estate broker about his website and what he can do to draw more traffic and make the site more useful for potential buyers and sellers. We live in a tourist market in the mountains and as such there are certain offerings that can be included that one may not include if we were in a typical Metro area.

It has become apparent that offering a brief description of your agents and a link to the MLS isn't sufficient anymore, regardless of how easy it is to access and navigate. As I recently mentioned, the effects of Web 2.0 standards are slowly trickling down into the various niche markets, and real estate is no exception. And so we begin carving through the many possibilities out there to determine which ones are a good use of programming and website space (or "real estate") and which ones are unnecessary gimmicks.

After searching the net, I have seen real estate websites that run the gamut, from simple barebones sites to sites that are chock full of information and features like the site for ellijay real estate. The latter specializes in a mountain area not unlike our own, and so I am thinking of pointing my client their way for ideas for his own site. While I don't see us offering all of the same features, some of them show promise and are suggestions that I had already made to my client in the past. Having an example to show him may help it "click" in his head how it could work.

In the end, it is all about generating leads. While traditional real estate websites have been about generating quantity over quality, the host of new applications available to real estate website developers can assist in the quality of those leads, as well.