Sandicor Inc., one of the largest multiple listing services in California, has launched a new public-facing property search portal with responsive design and a common search interface for consumers and real estate professionals.
The site, Sandicormls.com, is built on the “Spring” platform that real estate tech vendor Solid Earth launched last year. The platform was touted as a “broker-centric” alternative to top real estate portals Zillow and Trulia. With Sandicor’s 19,000-plus members, Spring now serves more than 30,000 real estate professionals nationwide.
Sandicormls.com offers consumers access to MLS-derived listing details, a “Find an Agent” tab, GreatSchools rating data, an affordability calculator from Planwise, and mapped points of interest such as hospitals. Its responsive design allows users to view the site easily on any device.
Agents and brokers can also log in separately to see MLS data not generally available to the public, such as off-market data, and to run a comparative market analysis (CMA) right from their smartphone or tablet. Pros also have access to lead management tools and site analytics.
When consumers inquire about listings, the leads go directly to the listing agent. Brokers can, however, set their own lead “pick-up” rules determining how long their agents have to claim leads from the site before those leads roll over to the “office pool” where they become available to other agents from the brokerage, according to Solid Earth spokeswoman Lauren Johannesmeyer.
Agents can also give their clients a unique “shortcode” provided through the platform to link a client’s consumer profile with their agent and share data exclusively with that agent. In addition, all of that consumer’s listing inquiries are then sent to that agent.
Both consumers and real estate pros can save searches in the system and receive email notifications when new listings match their specific criteria. They can also create listing collections that can be public or private. Some examples of collections could be “homes with red doors,” “beautiful landscaping ideas,” “favorite homes on Main Street,” “houses we’re competing with in the neighborhood” or “possible comps for an upcoming listing appointment,” Johannesmeyer said.
The collections have their own unique URL, and if public, users can share those collections via Facebook or Twitter or link to them from their own personal blog. Consumers can follow a collection, see new listings that have been added and whether there have been any changes to the average price, Johannesmeyer said. At the same time, agents, brokers and MLS administrators can see the traffic analytics of these collections in Spring’s back end, she added.
Other site analytics available to agents and brokers include:
- Real-time stats on the top referring domains that are bringing traffic back to the Sandicormls.com site.
- Real-time feedback for listing agents on how many times their listings are being viewed by anonymous consumers vs. logged-in consumers and agents.
- The number of collections a listing has been saved to.
- The number of times a listing was returned in search results compared to the number of times it was clicked on.
- Month-over-month and year-over-year inventory statistics for each agent’s personal inventory, the same stats for the brokerage accessible by the broker, and then the same stats for MLS-wide inventory accessible by the MLS administrator.
Spring’s platform is designed to boost traffic from search engines. For instance, property detail pages include the property address in the domain structure.
Since Sandicormls.com’s launch in April, 79 percent of the site’s visitors have come to the site because they recognize the Sandicor brand in some way — for instance, they typed “Sandicor” into a search engine, or went to Sandicormls.com or Sandicor.com directly.
The site’s organic traffic — those who find the site when looking for non-brand-specific terms such as “Chula Vista real estate” — stands at more than 18 percent and is increasing, Johannesmeyer said.
“It’s important that this is rising because it indicates a potential widening of the consumer base. The more people you can make aware of your brand, the better off your brand is, so if you have a strong brand and you’re seeking to expand your visibility and searchability, you can bring more eyes to your market and more potential buyers and sellers to your members,” she said.
Sandicor launched its first public-facing site, consumer.sandicor.com, in 2011.