Use Real Estate Data To Create Your Own Google-Type Alerts

Here’s a way to use real estate data for one of the greatest and often overlooked inventions of the Internet.

We’re talking about “alerts.” That beautiful byproduct of web technology that is an effective way to attract customers and build valuable email subscribers. It’s a simple gift that can bring in major deals.

On the web today, you can get alerts for anything. Go to Google News, pick a list of your favorite subjects – any subject from your favorite local sports team to your favorite stock to your favorite pop star.

Google will congregate all the information it can find on that subject. Then send it to you. And you will read it.

Okay, you might say, Google is a gazillion-dollar company. How can I as a local real estate broker or agent offer the same service?

With hyper-local real estate data.

While people can choose to get an alert for any little silly subject, you can provide alerts for one of the most valuable items that people own – their homes.

With real estate data from providers such as Home Junction, you can offer consumers a Market Trends alert for their neighborhood (or for home buyers, alerts for areas they are interested in).

Call it a Market Trend Alert. Very simple to do, with the right tools.

With the advanced big data technology that is available today, you can easily embed a widget on your website that will provide you with a treasure chest of local real estate data.

You don’t have to go out and find that information like Google does. Data providers such as Home Junction gather it for you from several different (and reliable) sources. And then send it to you in a data feed.

Now you have the ingredients to create your own Market Alerts.

Hyper-local real estate data will draw people to your emails

For example, say you want to you offer an alert for the neighborhood around Bashful Bear Country Club, a neighborhood you are farming.

Send out a mailing to home owners in that neighborhood offering to provide Market Alerts. Make the same offer with posts or ads on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest.

In that offer, you could give a brief outline of what your will provide. Market Trend data and charts for the number of sales in that neighborhood. A snapshot of what is going on with recent transactions and prices. Show charts with trend lines either pointing up or down.

With in-depth real estate data, you can go even further.

Provides Home Sales Data as well. Show recent sale prices, sales date, year the home was built, number of beds, number of baths and square footage.

Then, to be super-helpful, add in a geo-spatial element. Show the actual location of those sales on a map on your website. Then below it, show homes for sale in that same area.

How cool is that? How helpful is that insight for people who live in that area?

And most importantly, how important is that real estate data going to be as a catalyst for people in Bashful Bear County Club who are thinking about selling their homes.

When that market data hits their email inbox, illustrating how home prices are taking off for example, it might just prompt some home owners to decide it’s time to sell.

Who are they going to call to list their homes?

One strong contender will be the broker or agent who supplies them with that super-valuable information. He or she is going to certainly have top-mind-awareness and a leg up on all the competition.

Data creates a competitive advantage

For one, providing that data shows that this broker or agent is a real pro.

Secondly, talk about local knowledge. This agent not only knows about the neighborhood – the schools, the sales trends, the local amenities, they invested in being able to provide the data to back it up. That’s  true local knowledge.

Finally, that local real estate data is embedded directly on the agent’s web site. For potential sellers to view that information, they need to go to the agent’s website.

That’s a perfect lead generation opportunity. Provide a lead form. Perhaps make it a pop-up a visitor needs to fill out to see that data. Or provide a post visit pop-up before they leave the site with an offer to put together a market comparison proposal.

Alerts are an amazing tool. With the right real estate data tools, you can create your own amazing neighborhood alerts and start attracting consumers just like Google. You don’t need millions of visitors, you just need a few with properties to sell.