Using Real Estate Feeds For House-Hunting

Using Real Estate Feeds For House-Hunting
Tuesday, December 19, 2006, 10:17:49 AM
Web feeds, or RSS, has exploded in popularity over the last few years. It's a powerful marketing tool that will have a major affect on real estate marketing. Millions of people use web feeds every day. Most users view feeds through Newsreaders, but many web browsers and future operating systems are incorporating this technology.
If you are looking for a house or a place to rent, use web feeds to keep up with the latest listings. You can use feeds to easily keep track of properties from a wide variety of sources. As new properties are added to the feeds, you are notified almost immediately. If you see something you like, you can go directly to that property's web page. This saves time over continually checking individual web sites for updates.
Many real estate websites offer the ability to subscribe to email updates. Unlike e-mail, web feeds have a 100% delivery rate and there is no risk of spam problems.
Unfortunately, it can be difficult these days to find real estate professionals offering web feeds, let alone feeds that are purely property-driven or contain news specific to a certain geographic area. A majority of feeds are offered through 'blogs' of various qualities. More savvy professionals break their web feeds into categories, such as commercial, rentals and residential properties. Even mortgage finance professionals can use web feeds to keep customers and potential customers aware of market changes.As web feeds become more popular with the average user, expect more real estate professionals offering their listings via web feeds. If you aren't finding the feeds you want, ask for them by name!