Topix.net calls out craigslist

7 Comment(s)

1. Ed Kohler | Jun 4, 2006 | Reply

   What role do you think marketing plays in FSBO sales? Do new marketing opportunities online change the FSBO game, or are other factors more important for people considering selling or buying FSBO homes?

2. Wes Morgenegg | Jun 4, 2006 | Reply

   So is there a reason my post didn’t take?

3. Wes Morgenegg | Jun 4, 2006 | Reply

   First of all I would like to say that I do like a lot of the topics you chose to write about. Even though I wasn’t thrilled with your post about http://www.emongoo.com, a website I take a little bit of pride in! But that is not why I decided to comment on this post.

   In January 2006 when we, emongoo, looked around we couldn’t really find a standard marketing website for for sale by owners or fsbo’s to market on. (thus why we started http://www.emongoo.com) Yes there is craigslist, the newspapers, forsalebyowner.com, byowner.com, owners.com, freefsbozone.com, fsbo.com ( the list goes on and on and on ) but there isn’t one website that comes to mind for fsbo’s to effectively advertise on.

   If I need to find an answer on the web I more than likely will go to Yahoo or Goolge. If I am looking for travel I will go to expedia.com or http://www.travelocity.com, but if I am looking for fsbo real estate there are just too many options.

   Now http://www.topix.net joins the game, but really what good is it? Our clients (emongoo.com), will in some cases, have already placed their home on over 40 websites before they post on emongoo.com. 40 websites! That is nuts! We are seeing more and more people posting on emongoo as their first choice and we know that will only continue as our name gets out there, but the point is, shouldn’t there be one or two top real estate (fsbo) websites out there?

   I understand business and competition and I understand that emongoo.com doesn’t have all the answers, but how does a newspaper or a classified ad website justify for ‘the best real estate website’? Now Google and MSN are getting into the online fsbo mess, why? The answer is money. Look at what http://www.zillow.com did in less then 4 months. Zillow’s traffic is growing and growing fast which proves that people are interested in real estate in the millions. For businesses, millions of people equal millions of hits which translate to dollars. The fact is that the online real estate listing industry produces over 200 million dollars a year in just listing revenue alone and newspaper classifieds for real estate produce over 4.2 billion dollars a year. No advertising is figured into those numbers, so just add a lot more to it!

   The money is there, the sites are there, the newspapers are there, but is it all working? If it is then why do over 70 % of all for sale by owners turn to a real estate professional and why do all fsbo’s average over $1300.00 dollars in marketing expenses and market in over 30 different forms of online or offline listing services? To put it bluntly it isn’t working. All the fancy mapping websites, all the fancy new flash and all the high tech websites don’t sell real estate (even though I think a lot of them have created some very ‘cool’ technology). People sell real estate. Whether it is the owner, the neighbor or the realtor, people sell real estate.

   Now after that little speech you may wonder why I am in the online real estate industry, simple; to make a change. To change the way for sale by owners market their properties, to use people and simplistic, but powerful, technology to sell real estate. There needs to be a universal online portal for fsbo’s to market in. The realtors have the MLS, but what do fsbo’s have other then 100’s of sites to choose from? Maybe emongoo.com won’t work, maybe I will be calling http://www.topix.net or craigslist for a job, only time will tell. There just needs to be a better, more well know option.

   There is the business side and before you tear my post apart and say that craigslist and Google are the best ‘free’ for sale by owner websites out there let me say this; are they real estate? Is that all they do? Would you take your car to a plastic surgeon for body work? Maybe he could do it, but should he?

   My mother is now in her late 60’s (don’t tell her) and I have been trying to teach her computers for the last 15 years, so far not much luck. She has her Masters in health science, she is a well respected member of the community, owns her own business, but when it comes to web surfing, forget it. What is my point with all of this? Have you ever seen a first time or non-computer geek use some of the real estate websites out there?

   I will get off the soap box now; I do however have more to say, but I will save that for an other post. Please don’t take this post as ‘emongoo is the best and we are the only website you should list with’ (we are still growing and we have more and more we would like to do, but our clients are selling properties and that is the key.) Take this post as, ‘more and more people are saying they are a real estate listing website, when will it ever end!?’

4. realestatemarketing | Jun 6, 2006 | Reply

   Thanks for your thoughtful post Wes. And no, I won't tear it apart. In fact, I may have been overly harse and dismissive of your site in the past. I understand the need for FSBOs to have a "MLS" - I myself am currently looking to buy a home right now and have not been happy with any of the current sites out there.

   (I'm still maintaining that emongoo is a dumb name though).

   The key to any of these site's success is eyeballs. I, as a home seller, want as many eyeballs as I can on my listing. Google, craigslist - they have the traffic already. They have a significant slice of the collective mindshare.

   On the other side of the coin you have the media guys (Tribune etc.) who are seeing a huge slice of the revenue being carved out by craigslist, Google Base etc. - so they build their own sites or buy them.

   Who will win, the tech giants or the media giants? Anybody's guess right now.

   The downside to all this is that the little guy gets squeezed in between, not being able to compete with either's deep pockets. That said, I wish you luck with emongoo…

   (I only wish you'd change the name)

5. wes morgenegg | Jun 6, 2006 | Reply

   You are right, only time will tell and eyeballs are key to selling anything. With that said, we can’t change the name! What would we do with all the shirts?

   Thank you for your harsh comments, we can’t improve without them. Things are going well for us right now, but it is only because we listen to what our clients need and want. I will keep you posted on new changes, I think you will impressed with some features we are rolling out with…even if our name is ‘emongoo’!

6. Ken Hamric | Jul 5, 2006 | Reply

   “The downside to all this is that the little guy gets squeezed in between, not being able to compete with either’s deep pockets.”

   The local FSBO sites have advantages and disadvantages. First, with the owners being local, they know the area, the neighborhoods, the trends. The comps they can provide to home buyers or sellers are based not just on quantitative facts such as statistics or recent sales, but on their own actual knowledge of the area. Secondly, they are accessible - they live in the town, know all the contacts need to close a real estate deal, know the local regulations, etc.. They even have a local phone number! I believe this local insight and the ability to have a one on one relationship is invaluable to the local consumer in their local market.

   The are disadvantages for the local fsbo site owners however. The most serious is they have to try to compete with national sites for exposure . In positioning on the search engines, there are very few local sites (ok, none) that can achieve a high position on generic search terms such as ‘For Sale By Owner’ or ‘FSBO’. Even a local site such as FSBO Madison, which has gotten some great press this year and has done a great job in impacting their local market, has only one entry for these two search terms in the top 10 on either Google or Yahoo.

   The second issue is less serious, but still present - as technology increases, it becomes increasing hard for the local FSBO business to keep a competitive site that has the interactivity required to compete with the ‘big boys’. The national sites can spread this expenses across a much wider population, while the local for sale by owner site has a more limited market and budget. I have seen local sites, however, that are very ‘primitive’ in a technology sense, but that have lots of traffic and lots of paying customers advertising on them and - technology is definitely secondary to exposure!

   HomesByOwner.com has been working with local fsbo site owners since 1995 to provide a technology and brand for the local site owners to compete with the national sites. We don’t have a cute name, but we have been in this market for a long time. Some of the largest FSBO magazine publishers in the country, such as For Sale By Owner Magazine in Detroit (http://www.homesbyowner.com/detroit/), SaveBigByOwner magazine in Chicago (http://www.homesbyowner.com/chicago/), and The FSBO Store of Portland, OR (http://www.homesbyowner.com/portland_or) use the service to provide national exposure, top 10 search engine placement, and a owner configurable technology platform, while running their local business in the way that best fits their local market. 30 of the top 40 FSBO magazines in the county have been using our service for years. In addition, we have mortgage brokers and ‘non-traditional’ real estate brokers (such as flat fee or discount brokers) as site owners in another 150 metro areas. Some of these, such as Duffy Realty in Atlanta (http://www.homesbyowner.com/atlanta) are extremely successful (over 1K current homes) in bring an alternative real estate service to their FSBO clientele. We believe that the model of providing the ‘little guy’ the national exposure is all they need to effectively compete with and beat the ‘national’ guys - the advantage they have in being local should not be underestimated.

7. antabuse | Mar 12, 2008 | Reply

   http://antabuse.all-aceon.info/index.html antabuse

3 Trackback(s)

1. From Seattle’s Rain City Real Estate Guide » Paying for the Privilege of Marginalization | Jun 8, 2006
2. From realiventblog.com | Nov 7, 2006
3. From dynamiclistingexchange.com | Nov 8, 2006

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