June 13 , 2006
Real Estate Technology News

When EXIT Realty Northwest launched in northwest Arkansas in late 2004, it faced a number of challenges related to brand recognition, agent recruiting and online presence.

For the unknown and unproven brokerage, generating listings was a key concern. Broker/owner Mike Robinson knew more and more buyers were online and that he had to establish a strong Web presence quickly. When the cost of a custom-built solution proved prohibitive, he turned to Point2 Technologies, which provides online marketing software platforms for real estate professionals.

Robinson switched to the Point2 Agent platform several months after his company launched, using the system for online branding, marketing and sales lead capture. Realtors sign up for the free Point2 Agent Web site when they join the company. Sites are free for them, but they can upgrade to a premium site for a fee. “Most of them don’t elect to upgrade. They keep the standard site. It’s linked to our site, and they have all their listings appear on their site through the ‘handshake’ link with our main site,” Robinson said.

Point2’s handshake functionality ensures that agent Web sites are interconnected and the broker’s listings appear on every site simultaneously. One of the prime benefits of the system is lead generation and incubation. When clients on the sites view an EXIT listing, they’re asked to provide their name, phone number, e-mail address, etc. A drip e-mail campaign is then set up. Agents can also set up their own, separate e-mail campaign.

“We take those leads that come in and pull them off to the listing agent so he can follow up,” Robinson said.

EXIT has an IDX link to the local MLS (running on First American’s MLXchange), and MLS listings appear in a box on the Point2 sites. According to Robinson, the Point2 system lets agents show more detailed information, including more photos, than the MLS allows.

As Robinson and his agents are doing dual entry in both systems, he said integrated data entry would be a welcome addition to the software.

In its first year, the brokerage reported $28 million in sales and has doubled its Web traffic. EXIT Northwest now has 46 agents and is quickly adding more.

Robinson said his county was one of the fastest growing real estate markets in 2004, but in the last six months, closings have started to drop from the same period last year. He expects the Point2 system will help him ride out the market shift.

“Everything we see from NAR, the surveys they do and certainly our experiences locally is there is a huge shift where homebuyers are picking both their houses and agents away from print media and towards the Internet. … Being out there with a good-looking, interactive Web site — which shows clients all the houses we’ve shown them and the houses we’ve proposed for them to look at, and where they can send us comments — we think we’re well-positioned for continued growth. Over the past 15 months, there’s a steady upward stream of hits,” Robinson said.

How might the company extend its Web capabilities in the future? Robinson would like to start using a transaction management system (TMS), but he wants to see it done at MLS level so that everyone in the local Realtor association is using the same system. Otherwise, cooperating agents won’t be able to update each other’s files and maintain an online process.

Local Stewart title offices encourage Realtors in the area to use its TMS system, but as Robinson said, “We don’t close everything with Stewart. My agents have to have two different systems — their manual system and that one.”

“I’d like to see the whole MLS go to that,” he concluded. “I’d be very excited about that.”