LiveBy, Inc., the leader in geographical data and hyperlocal content in residential real estate, recently released the new ratings for top brokerage websites and scoring on the caliber of hyperlocal insights in their 2022 Local Insights Ratings. Companies such as Long Realty, BHHS Fox & Roach, LIV Sotheby’s, and BHGRE Metro Brokers are topping the list in their respective markets.
LiveBy reviewed websites for nearly 2,000 of the industry’s top brokerages and weighted their local insights rating, based on eighteen data points, across three primary data categories. And now LiveBy is serving up a Competitive Analysis, by state and market, to give a better indication of who consumers are more likely to seek out for community information when searching online.
“Over the years, we have been asked to provide consults on brokerage/franchise websites and the community information they are offering, so we decided to start providing annual evaluations and ratings,” says Jeff Nieto, Chief Strategy Officer of LiveBy.
Especially in today’s market climate, brokerages can get caught up in the race to get property listings in front of consumers, although this is only a bottom-of-the-funnel approach. The average consumer begins searching for their next home 12-18 months before they are prepared to physically move.
Why should brokerages care about that statistic? If your website is set up primarily to capture leads at a listing-level, that means your brand is roughly a full year behind in potential nurturing.
Early in the home search, a consumer is not likely to sign up as a lead on a listing because they are not prepared to live in that home yet, nor do they want to risk being contacted by an agent too soon. In the mind of a consumer, the location is most important in the early stages. They are both trying to analyze how their current neighborhood is performing in the market and most importantly, where do we want to live next? If a brokerage wants to fight the online battle with the portals, they need to exploit what they are better at — hyperlocal expertise. Everyone wants to claim they are the “local expert”, although a consumer, conducting online research, does not know that, or rather believes that unless you are proving it with content on your website.
“Through our analysis, there appears to be a large gap in brokerages providing insights about the communities they serve. While it is imperative to do so, it is not a simple task, and it makes sense why LiveBy’s entire company is focused on this effort,” said Travis Saxton, EVP of Technology, T3 Sixty.
LiveBy is also trying to help change the narrative on how the industry largely misrepresents neighborhood data. Many brokerages use the terms like “discover the perfect neighborhood” and “local expert” on their websites but are providing zip code-level data for those neighborhoods or just pushing consumers to a filtered home search — with no real helpful content to inform decisions.
It is no surprise the brokerages with the most intentional, hyperlocal data insights on their websites correlate with the same brokerages topping transaction and volume rankings.
What to see how your company’s website stacks up in our website ratings? Check it out here.