Real estate marketing for today's consumer: Using Google Earth

Top agents realize that the
needs of today’s consumer are not the same as consumers’ needs even a few years
ago.  The Internet has opened up new worlds for all of us…and buyers or
sellers of real estate are no exception.

For example, agents are being “interviewed” all the
time without the agent knowing it.  Buyers and sellers typically go to the
Web to look at properties and to search for a listing agent 6-9 months ahead of
their projected move, according to a recent NAR study.  The agent without a
deep, consumer-oriented Web site, then, is out of the running when it’s time for
these consumers to make a decision. (Note: it is my experience that 85-90% of
today’s agents still do not have a money-making Web site!)

There are many tools that today’s agent should use to
meet the consumer’s needs: digital cameras, tablet pc’s with “air cards,”
virtual tours, automatic contact systems, online transaction management
systems and more.

alt=”Google Earth Image” hspace=7
src=”http://blog.theaterchurch.com/uploaded_images/GoogleEarth_Image-780727.jpg”
width=245 align=left vspace=7 border=0>An additional tool is Google Earth,
Google’s amazing “view from space” tool that many of you have probably
used.  I used it, for example, before my first visit to Japan to see my
son.  He lives in a rural area of Japan, but I was able to clearly see the
nearby city (Aomori), his proximity to the ocean and, by tilting the image, the
nearby mountains.

If you have used it as I have, have you thought
of the possibilities it has as a sales and listing tool for today’s
consumer?  You can easily capture an ariel photo of a neighborhood, for
example, to show a buying prospect what the surrounding area looks like. 
You can identify and label landmarks as well.

One of my CyberStars(r), Joan Prout of RE/MAX Villa
Realtors, Jersey City, NJ ( href=”http://www.joanprout.com/”>http://www.joanprout.com/), sent in the
following item about her use of Google Earth:

“ face=arial,helvetica,sans-serif color=#000000 size=3>I took a buyer out
yesterday who flew in from San Francisco on Friday and flew back last
night.  I
just emailed him a ‘map’ with his 3 favorite properties, the transportation
stations he’d use to get to his job in Manhattan, and the face=arial,helvetica,sans-serif color=#000000 size=3>closest ice rink (which
he’d asked me to find).  One of
the condos he liked size=3>has a roof deck, and you can actually make it out when you zoom
in.”

A great use for a great new marketing
tool that meets the needs of today’s consumer!

It’s a wonderful evening here on the
lake in Reston…hope it’s a wonderful evening where you are, too!

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.