The residential real estate market has hit a milestone: Homesnap’s data reveals that for the first time in years, there are more than 1 million active home listings nationwide.
What does an increase in the number of active listings mean for consumers? For buyers, more listings mean more options, and less pressure to engage in bidding wars. For sellers, more listings means less leverage, and no more guarantee that their home will fly off the market at or above a sky-high asking price.
Overall, your sellers need to work harder to create demand for their listings and receive more and better offers.
Marketing individual listings is always important, but in a market with more competition for sellers, your reputation as an agent will determine how buyers and buyers’ agents view your clients’ properties. Top agents work the best listings. If you have a reputation as a top agent, your sellers’ properties are more likely to be seen and viewed favorably.
Homesnap Pro+ helps you establish your reputation with a verified Google Business Profile and positive, plentiful reviews that rank you prominently in Google search results for local real estate agents.
With Pro+, your sellers’ properties will attract buyer attention, get more and better offers, sell at a higher price, and improve your reputation even further.
Verify Your Google Business Profile
In the physical world, your reputation is determined by situations like this: Somebody is looking for a real estate agent, has heard your name, and casually asks a friend or family member or coworker about you. What will they hear?
You want that consumer to hear that you’re a top-notch professional with a strong community presence. You don’t want responses like, “I haven’t heard of her” or “I didn’t even know she was in real estate.”
Things work the same way on Google, the most-trafficked search engine and the first stop for many consumers who hear your name. When consumers type your name into Google, what will tell them that you’re deserving of their business? Your best bet is a verified, complete Google Business Profile.
Your Google Business Profile is the business information box that appears on the right side of search results for your name on desktop and at the top of searches for your name on mobile devices. Your GBP contains information about your brand and real estate services, including contact details, a business description, hours of operation, and reviews from your network.
Having a complete, verified Google Business Profile means that when consumers ask Google about you, the search engine is in essence answering with a referral: “Yes, she’s a legitimate agent, and she has our stamp of approval.”
Still, verifying and completing your Google Business Profile takes precious time – unless you have Homesnap Pro+. Pro+ automatically verifies your Google Business Profile, and then fills it with all the business information on your Homesnap agent profile. No waiting, no stress, no time spent away from your clients.
Get Positive Google Reviews
Your Google Business Profile is at the core of your online reputation. And reviews are at the core of your Google Business Profile.
Positive reviews help you demonstrate your professionalism and show off your successes. A Google Business Profile that contains negative reviews or none at all is disastrous for your online reputation – it’s the same as a potential client mentioning your name and someone in the crowd piping up to say, “whatever you do, don’t work with her.”
Google recognizes the value of reviews, and as a result gives priority ranking to profiles that exhibit a strong reputation as a trustworthy local agent. So when consumers search for general real estate terms such as “real estate agents near me,” Google will display the business profiles of agents who consistently receive positive reviews.
For all their importance, getting the reviews you need can be a drag. It requires organization and follow-ups and awkward phone conversations and emails, right? Fortunately, not anymore. With Homesnap Pro+’s One-Click Review Tool, you can get reviews consistently and easily.
With the One-Click Review Tool, you can in one click request a review from a client when their home sells, or from a fellow agent who you meet at a conference, or from a friend who asks for real estate advice, or from a family member when you tell them you’re in real estate. Remember that positive reviews from anyone in your network is viewed favorably by Google. And all of your Homesnap contacts are synced with the One-Click Review Tool, so review generation is literally at your fingertips.
As a bonus, the One-Click Review Tool automatically follows up with individuals who have been asked for a review but not yet left one – saving you time and energy.
Overall, a complete, verified Google Business Profile with positive reviews demonstrates your professionalism and draws more attention to your services. As your real estate services get more attention, so do your listings. And as your listings get more attention, your seller clients are more likely to get the best offers on home listings, even when there are more than 1 million of them on the market.