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Recently 1000Wattsconsulting.com released a report of the top 10 real estate broker websites in America. Unfortunately, there list only has 9 websites, saying that none of the websites they reviewed “met the level of overall excellence that would merit the label ‘Best brokerage website in America.’” Most of them had browser compatibility issues or inadequate search functions to truly stand out as the #1 website.
This not surprising when you think about it – many real estate broker websites are outdated, having not been updated since the late 90′s or over 5 years ago – and naturally since then internet technology has made a big change. Others are so complex that trying to navigate through them can be a challenge.
In a way though, it is good news – it means there’s lots of room for improvement and that really just about any website could adopt what they believe to have the qualities to be the “Best Brokerage Website”. The sites that they did choose also make for excellent examples for those of you struggling on how to design each of your own websites.
So what exactly do they believe to be the “home run” of real estate website design? Usability, Updated Content, Search Options, and Tools & Applications to enhance the customer’s experience.
Here were their findings as the Top Best Brokerage Websites in America:
10. Meybohm Realtors
www.meybohm.com
9. Howard Hanna Real Estate
www.howardhanna.com
8. Nothnagle Realtors
www.nothnagle.com
7. PMZ Real Estate
www.pmzrealestate.com
6. Hasson Company Realtors
www.hasson.com
5. Intero Real Estate Services
www.interorealestate.com
4. Corcoran Group Real Estate
www.corcoran.com
3. Briggs Freeman Real Estate
www.briggs-freeman.com
2. Russ Lyon Sotheby’s International Realty
www.russlyon.com
1. As Mentioned Above, No #1
Most of these sites were chosen to be in the top 10 (or shall we say 9?) because they offer updated news, special search features, video posts, even live chat. I think they made some excellent choices and all of these can serve as excellent inspiration for designing and updating your own real estate company websites.
14 Comments
My favorite is Russ Lyon’s site. It is really nice. Glad you think so too!
You are correct, so many are very outdated and there is room for huge improvement.
What s the criteria to be included in this list. Most lead conversions? Most functional? Most user friendly? Coolest looking? This seems like a pretty random list of so-so websites
I have to laugh a little about the number one site. PR3 and 50 pages indexed by Google and that is considered #1. Am I missing something? Lol.
wow nice sites, how much would one of these run? about 8-10k?
they should spend more on there seo
I’m glad 99% of the real estate companies and 80% of the agents don’t understand how beneficial having a great internet presence can be. Makes it a little easier….
Those are some great examples. I would venture that the minimum to create sites like those with content and good design is atleast 20k.
@Michael Oliver, I’m with you on that. Even the ones that do understand can’t justify the cost in their minds.
Most “old school” agents are starting to wind out. The internet is the future of real estate, and those with informative, consumer friendly websites will make it through these tough times.
This is a really good list of real estate sites. It’s amazing to see how fast this niche has grown on the web.
Even though today there are a number of outdated broker sites it seems that 3 years ago the number of outdated sites was significantly greater. I think people are paying alot more attention to their web presence these days.
I love the Briggs-Freeman site. Its beautiful.
The Meybohm site has more calls to action.
That’s something I need to work on in my own site.
I think some of these sites are WAY more than 25K. The one common thing I see is that they arent really set up for great on page SEO on the homepage.
I guess that is always the trade off. You either provide for onpage optimization or you have more graphic elements.
Thanks for bringing the list.
I’d much rather have an optimize site and user friendly site than a flashy site that is not found easily.
Stay tuned for Cashin.com (the brokerage my team works within) I hear they are making some major changes that are going to make the website awesome.
It’s amazing to watch the US-market top sites – the European real estates market is lightyears behind in terms of net competition. For example, many realtors still scan their print-classifieds and put them online.
This list seems decently accurate. I only check the first few sites, but they were all very high quality and I can see why they made the list.
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