Our San Diego home search provider just got better. We have been using a platform from Diverse Solutions for the better part of the past year. I love it, and I can only assume that our users appreciate it as well. I can only assume, that is, because I have long adopted a contrarian approach among real estate agents to allow free comings and goings without requiring registration. More on that crazy, self-defeating way of earning your business in a minute, but first for some of the cool new features. Visitors can now search by:
- School district
- Days on market
- Price change
- Nature of sale (foreclosure, pre-foreclosurem short sale)
In addition, visitors can make notes on specific homes for later reference. The searches seem to be loading faster, and the navigation is more intuitive.
Jay Thompson, the Phoenix Real Estate Guy, is a fellow disciple of my church of laid-back information delivery and a fellow Diverse Solutions customer. He wrote:
I (once) experimented with requiring user registration. While there is no question that the number of “leads” produced in this manner increased greatly, the fact is that I don’t follow up / call / email anyone that simply wants to search for homes. (I know for a fact that many real estate agents and brokers are shaking their heads in disbelief right now). The way I figure it, you guys are pretty smart. If you need help, you’ll ask for it. And I’m more than happy to help.
Since I don’t “follow up” there seems little reason to force people to register. So that functionality has been turned off. Now if you want access to some wicked cool things like saved searches, the ability to get automatic updates of new homes, build your own RSS feeds for specific home searches and more, then you will need to supply an email address and password. You still won’t be hassled or get newsletters, refrigerator magnets or any other trinkets real estate agents are prone to distribute. That’s not how we roll. But to access things like auto-updates and saved searches, there has to be a way to identify you from the other several hundred that are using this tool. Email is the way that is done. Trust me, I loathe spam and your email address will never, ever, be sold or compromised.
Amen, brother! This describes our philosophy to a T.
Take it for a test drive. I promise not to put you in a headlock and make you buy something.
