Or are third-party sites like real estate portals, property search engines, and real estate aggregators enough?
Do you need a real estate agent personal website?
It can be really tempting to defer to third-party portals for all your lead generation needs.
After all, real estate listing sites have the best rankings on search engine results pages—they’re easily discoverable and therefore heavily frequented by would-be buyers and renters. That aside, they’re so much simpler to manage – there’s no back-end or maintenance work to worry about!
In other words, third-party sites give you excellent exposure without all the hard work.
So does it even make sense to build an independent site? Are real estate agent personal websites worth the investment? The short answer: Absolutely!
Here’s why.
Benefits of having your own real estate broker website
1. Having your own real estate agent personal website makes you more trustworthy.
Trust – you can’t sell homes without it.
First and foremost, real estate deals are high-involvement transactions. For most people, they’re long-term investments related to one’s dreams. Second, they involve large sums of money—more so when it comes to commercial real estate.
Clearly, buyers aren’t going to purchase property from any Tom, Dick, or Harry. They’re going to do their due diligence. Their first stop? Your website, so they can learn more about the person or entity behind the listing they liked.
✅ A personal page reassures potential clients that you’re a legitimate business and not some fly-by-night operation.
2. Use your website to show prospects why you’re different.
The real estate industry is saturated with property brokers doing exactly what you do. Given this environment, blending in won’t help you grow your real estate business.
While connections, personal relationships, and word of mouth are crucial, so, too, is standing out to attract new clients. That’s where an independent website comes in.
Compared to a tiny profile box or standard agent overview page, here there’s no shortage of space to share what you need to persuade buyers to choose you for one of the biggest purchases of their lives.
✅ Building your own website gives you a valuable platform for personal branding; to distinguish yourself from rival realtors.
3. You can attract better qualified leads.
Third-party sites target the masses, that is the general public—a very broad audience looking for real estate to buy, rent, or sell.
Having your own realtor website, on the other hand, lets you focus on YOUR target market no matter how niche. For example: Student renters, first-time buyers, wealthy foreign investors, retirees looking to downsize, or maybe even individuals looking for real estate in a very specific neighborhood.
✅ Rather than acquiring plenty of dead-end leads, targeted (and SEO) web copy will attract relevant traffic, so you get better qualified leads. That is, individuals most likely to buy!
4. Enjoy complete freedom over how you market your properties.
When you have your own website, you have complete freedom over how you market your properties—from aesthetic down to the components. You can use highly-immersive video landing pages or create media-rich listings with videos, 3D virtual tours, and interactive floor maps. It’s all up to you!
On the other hand, when you rely on third-party websites, your listings may be confined to their website’s design limitations and / or guidelines—a set aesthetic that’s uniform across all listings. You have to follow their formatting, fill in their predetermined fields, and upload images of a certain size or dimension.
✅ With a real estate agent personal website, you have 100% control over how you present your listings to potential clients.
5. Draw attention to other properties that may be of interest.
While prospects can certainly find all your current listings on third-party platforms, the reality is those listings are competing with dozens of other real estate offers and, of course, their corresponding agents.
Users quickly jump from one page to another during their search.
What if they view one of your properties but aren’t enamored with it? Then they simply move—you won’t necessarily have another opportunity to engage that user.
✅ If you can drive prospects to your real estate agent personal website, the other available listings are still yours. You can present those without external distractions!
6. You can get more business out of those views.
Let’s say your real estate agency also offers interior design and staging services. How do you effectively promote them on a third-party platform dedicated to advertising property? It’s not that easy.
On the other hand, if you drive leads to a real estate agent personal website, then they’re bound to come across your supplementary services in a natural, non-intrusive way—and perhaps inquire about them.
✅ You can increase the lifetime value of each client by introducing any other value-added services your agency offers when it may be most useful.
6. You have a venue to post real estate news and updates.
Want to prove that you’re a reputable subject matter expert? Well, a personal website is the ideal home for all your carefully-curated property-related news and updates. From checklists to the lowdown on economic policies that have an impact on the real estate market and what that means for your (potential) clients – your website is another venue to demonstrate your subject matter expertise.
✅ This enhances your credibility on relevant topics vital to earning trust—and attracting new clients.
7. You have a convenient way to grow your email list.
People that inquire or browse your listings today aren’t necessarily going to buy any time soon. The reality is, they may still be in the very early stages of the buyer journey.
Fortunately, the leads you acquire via your own website are leads who can choose to opt in for your marketing emails. So rather than lose those prospects entirely, you now have a golden opportunity to nurture those leads through regular contact, so that you, your listings, and services stay top of mind.
✅ Unlike on third-party sites, here you are able to invite readers to sign up for your marketing messages.
All this to say, there’s really no good reason to forego building your own real estate website. It may require a bit more effort, but there’s also more to gain!
Now if your primary concern is that you simply don’t have time to write SEO web copy or attractive real estate descriptions, then it’s high time you think about outsourcing those tasks to a real estate copywriter. Here’s where you can message me to request a quote or learn more about how I can help you land more leads.