Frequently Asked Questions
What benefits does Explore My Neighborhood offer to buyers?
There are two main benefits for buyers...
First, they can easily browse any property using an intuitive map that showcases the selling features of both the property AND the neighborhood.
Second, they'll have more confidence in the selling features of the neighborhood when they're selected by the people who know the neighborhood best - the property owners.
Rather than see a list of, say, all restaurants in the neighborhood, buyers only see those selected by the property owner who has firsthand knowledge about which are the best restaurants in the neighborhood.
What benefits does Explore My Neighborhood offer to sellers?Explore My Neighborhood is part of an Internet marketing strategy that showcases the two most important things a buyer wants to know about a property - the selling points of the property itself, and the selling points of the neighborhood.
For sellers who want to take an active role in the selling process, Explore My Neighborhood allows the seller set up the neighborhood points of interest.
For sellers who prefer you, as their agent, to manage the selling process, Explore My Neighborhood allows you to set up the neighborhood points of interest yourself.
How are the neighborhood points of interest set up?
You set up each neighborhood point of interest by uploading pictures and writing a description. This gives you complete control over how the points are presented in the context of the property listing.
No, you as an agent own the relationship with the property seller. Explore My Neighborhood will have no contact with the seller, other than to provide technical support in using the site.
As an agent, you purchase Explore My Neighborhood as a service to offer to your customers. You control both when and how it is offered.
Will this replace my personal website?
No, Explore My Neighborhood is meant to complement your existing website by allowing you to present properties for sale in a more complete manner. Your will still use your regular website for other relevant information (i.e. market surveys, mortgage calculators, etc) that you want to provide to customers.
No, you can only access a property featured through Explore My Neighborhood if you know the specific link to the page.
Explore My Neighborhood is meant to help agents market an individual property over the Internet. It is not intended to compete against complete databases of houses for sale, like MLS.
What can this do for my brand as an agent?
Potential clients (property owners looking to sell) realize the importance of the Internet to showcase their property.
If they compare two agents, one with a poorly designed website that only shows a basic description of properties, and one with a well designed website augmented with Explore My Neighborhood, they'll instinctively trust the augmented site to effectively sell their home.
With potential buyers researching you as an agent over the Internet, you can use Explore My Neighborhood to build your brand and differentiate yourself from other agents.
How can this help brand a property?
Say you wanted to market a property to a young family. You can use neighborhood points of interest to reinforce that the property is suited to a family, by showing points such as a park, a school, a daycare, etc.
Alternatively, if you wanted to market the same property to a single executive, you would use a different set of neighborhood points of interest to reinforce the brand of the property (i.e. a coffee shop, a trendy restaurant, a dry cleaner, etc).