Trying to Find a Charlotte Realtor® Online?

When I built my Charlotte real estate website several years ago, my main goal was to become #1 in the search engines for my target areas. I achieved that for a very long time but, have noticed lately that, despite an updated website, lots of INFORMATIVE data on the site, up-to-the-minute home listings, neighborhood information…and more…I am seeing national websites leading the way in the searches, topping the ‘real’ sites that have valuable information on them for the consumer.

No, I’m not crying over spilled milk – I have a healthy referral base for clients but, I do love serving new leads too! It is, however, upsetting to see these monster sites overtaking the local websites that truly have the most valuable consumer information. My brother-in-law recently made the mistake of doing a search on one of the monster sites, only to be called by 25+ real estate agents, hoping to garner his business.

How does that happen? You see, these monster sites are not local – in fact, most of them – are based on the West Coast, far, far away from Charlotte! They operate solely to sell leads to real estate agents. Agents sign up for specific areas, cities, zip codes and pay a fee for leads from these businesses (the monster sites).

What’s wrong with that? Typically the agents who buy these leads do not have a lot of business of their own – many are new agents who have been bamboozled by sales representatives, also paid a hefty commission for selling to these agents. They buy into the concept that they will be getting lots of leads and make a lot of money from sales by signing up with them.

The good, the bad and the ugly:

The good: These sites feature large photos, lots of demographic information (again, from West Coast analysts) and ease of locating information.
The bad: Buyers often find home estimates on these sites that are nowhere NEAR the actual value of the site’s estimates. What then happens is that buyers fall in love with a home and refuse to pay the ACTUAL value (often the list price) and offer far too low, based on erroneous information.
The ugly: The consumer is assigned to several agents, all of whom blow up your phones and email accounts, desperate to be the ‘winning’ agent. Who suffers? YOU, the consumer – the aggravation alone is bad enough but, then you fly to Charlotte to find that your agent either doesn’t show up to meet you OR have no clue about real estate!

The reality? You, the consumer, get a horribly raw deal. My advice is to skip down a few tabs when you’re trying to find a Charlotte Realtor® online. If you know that the sites listed in the top positions in your Google search have information about homes and neighborhoods THROUGHOUT THE UNITED STATES – RUN! You want someone with LOCAL information!

Visit local agents’ websites who keep the listings updated (ours is updated several times an HOUR – not several times a year like some of the larger sites!), provide detailed information and have real estate agents behind their sites – not a corporation, scamming the system and thus, scamming the consumer!

Contact us for more ACCURATE information on the Charlotte Metro region. We live here and work full time in this business. We would be more than happy to share our knowledge with you!