Wow. I can't believe this. Just got another email from HouseValues.com. For those of you unfamiliar with HouseValues... lets say I wasn't a real estate agent, and I wanted to find out how much my home is worth. I would go to HouseValues.com, fill out my information about the house, and submit my information.
Now the sneaky part is that this information is forwarded (aka "sold") by HouseValues to the real estate agent who is assigned my area, who then does some market research and tries to figure out a Fair Market Value for your home. Then they email you or call you or sometimes visit your home to give you your "report". That doesn't sound too bad, except that you can't pick the agent yourself, and that the HouseValues system keeps sending you emails afterwards.
I always wondered, wouldn't you have better luck just emailing 5 different real estate agents in your area and getting 5 different evaluations? That way, you could pick your agent, and you wouldn't get spammed every week or two.
I got sucked into this whole system about 2 years ago when I signed up for their service. I was just starting out in real estate and was eager and had money to spend on marketing. HouseValues is free for the public, but the way they make money is by selling a certain number of leads per month to real estate agents. And it's not cheap. I received roughly 12 to 20 leads per month, and it cost me a whopping $2,224 per month. So far in my relative short real estate career, it has been the most expensive marketing that I have done... billboard ads in Pierce County cost less per month and those promise to reach hundreds of thousands of people. That's how expensive HouseValues is.
The REASON I signed up however, was because I was told "48% of all leads become clients" by the guy on the phone. I did some quick math in my head to realize that was a good deal. (But nothing was guaranteed, and that was my mistake).
As usual, it was too good to be true. After about 60 leads and about 4 months gone by, I didn't see anything that resembled an actual real estate client. I had 3 main types of leads. 1) First, there were the people who wouldn't leave any type of contact info, or fake contact info. 2) Then, there were the people who filled out everything correctly, but as soon as they realized that a "real estate agent" is contacting them, they cursed and screamed and vowed to "sue me". 3) And finally, my favorite, there were the people who would enter something like "Pee Wee Herman at 123 Fake Street, Bellevue, Washington 98007." I'm guessing the only part that was true about it is "Bellevue, Washington 98007", and there's nothing I could do with that.
Another example of leads were people who already had homes listed on the real estate market (MLS) and just wanted to double check that their agent had listed it at a fair price.
The email I just got from them now says that "1 in 5 real estate leads enter into a transaction within 1 year."
Now I'm not disputing the "truthfulness" of that statement. In fact, I would probably agree with that statement the way it is written. But the statement itself is extremely misleading.
It states that "1 in 5 LEADS" will enter into a transaction. But that doesn't mean they'll enter into a transaction with you. In fact, some of the leads that I received were ALREADY in a real estate transaction... but with someone else.
I guess the moral of the story is this... unless a company can "GUARANTEE" something in writing, don't believe everything that is merely "promised" to you. I learned the hard way, that if it's really that easy, then EVERYONE would be doing it. But there's better ways to market yourself in real estate.
