Realtor.com Enhancements Boost Your Business

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RISMEDIA, Sept. 10, 2008-By enhancing one of the top consumer real estate websites in the world, REALTOR.com has increased visibility of Realtors® in many ways. According to the company, one example is the new Find a Neighborhood function, which provides a one-of-a-kind resource for home buyers. Find a Neighborhood provides extensive information on specific neighborhoods across the United States including neighborhood characteristics, real estate information and listings, school ratings, local amenities, high-resolution photography, map overlays and colorful charts and graphs to inform Realtor.com visitors.

All of this helps drive new and repeat traffic to your Realtor.com property listings, says the company.

How It Works

Visitors can search by neighborhood, city and state, or ZIP code. They can navigate through interactive map information, and refine their matches to locate or browse neighborhoods.

The company says that visitors can also read Neighborhood Summary & Detail Pages to learn about community history, housing information, weather and demographic data, school information and ratings, lifestyle profiles, crime statistics, rich media and property listings from Realtor.com.

Find a Neighborhood, says the company, wows consumers with impressive cityscape and neighborhood images in unprecedented gigapixel-level detail. These extreme resolution images allow visitors to explore each location with zoom and pan features that immerse them in the image. In addition, cutting-edge maps powered by Microsoft Virtual Earth include heat maps, data overlays and “mouse-over” and interactive panning functionality.

What’s more, users-including Realtors-who log onto REALTOR.com-can contribute to the Realtor.com community by adding their own neighborhood photos to a “Wikihood”-a wiki page on each neighborhood.

Future plans include Find a Neighborhood allowing agents and brokers additional opportunities to connect with consumers, and demonstrate their expertise and skills by posting answers and comments on individual neighborhoods.

How “Find a Neighborhood” Helps You

The company says that Realtors will find that their property listings are prominently displayed to drive consumer traffic directly from Find a Neighborhood to a broker/agent Listing Detail Page. The Neighborhood Summary pages also position Realtors as a source for credible information and opening dialogue to interpret information and demonstrate their local market expertise. And Realtor.com Featured Community advertisers are receiving additional exposure at no additional cost, reaching consumers in the early stages of researching their next move through this valuable section of Realtor.com.

Take an Online Tour

See these additions to the site for yourself in a two-minute online tour. You can follow the new search features of Realtor.com, including Find a Neighborhood, in one of three Web-based tours available at www.TourTheNewREALTOR.com. View the tours and find out how the new site can take your listings from for sale to sold. Or for hands-on assistance and a personal walk-through of the site features, call 1-800-878-4166. Take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with the new REALTOR.com today, so that you can take full advantage of its cutting-edge capabilities and maximize your own online presence.

RISMedia welcomes your questions and comments. Send your e-mail to: realestatemagazinefeedback@rismedia.com.

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