Savannah Homes - A Picture is Not Worth a Thousand Words

More than likely if you are reading this you found this site through an online search engine. Perhaps you put in a search term such as “Savannah Ga Homes”, “Savannah Ga Waterfront Homes”, “Downtown Savannah Ga Homes”, “midtown Savannah Ga Homes”, etc.

It gets harder and harder for a small company like mine to get good placement on Google or Yahoo for searchers to find me, but on certain terms I do fairly well. With the advent of large companies providing lead generation to real estate agents, small, local companies who can’t afford to hire IT experts get pushed down the search result lists.

The large companies, who are mainly in business to capture online home buyers and sell them to local agents who have little or no web presence, can afford IT experts who, in turn, get these large companies good search engine placement. These large lead-generating companies work on the international stage and charge local agents for providing leads that they sign up on their sites, or they charge these agents to place listings on their site.

This can be good or bad for the consumer. The good aspect of this new way of marketing homes is that a consumer can view many listings with photos and information. The bad aspect is that the consumer may be led down the wrong path if the agent who is given the leads is inexperienced, or worse, incompetent, and if the information received is misleading. The quality of the information and credentials/experience of the participating agents aren’t managed very well by these large companies – it is more about quantity and size of online presence than it is about quality of service rendered at the level of actual home-buying.

I have written about this before in previous blog posts - pictures are not worth a thousand words when looking at homes online. With modern photography technology, photos can be an illusion – nice to look at, but in need of the thousand words of explanation. Information on these big sites is not managed very well either – for example, some homes advertised for sale have already been sold, some demographic information applies more to the larger area than the particular neighborhood in which the house sits, prices are reduced and not updated at the sites, square footage is not correct, etc. -- or information is so sketchy it is useless.

Photos are fine, and it is good to get a visual understanding of areas, but when it comes to a particular home you might be interested in purchasing, you need more than the perfect photograph. And, just because a big company sends you an agent contact doesn't mean the agent has experience or the requisite knowledge you need to help you gather information.

Now, you are going to say that I am setting up the advantages of going with a small, local company like mine where the information is managed by someone who has experience and is knowledgeable of the area– Uh, yes, I am -

But only because I believe it to be true.

Besides, I have access to all the listings which are presented through the MLS locally regardless of which company has the listing.

We can tell you the thousand words that put pictures in perspective. We can verify information and give you even more information to help you make a truly informed decision. My company might be small but our commitment to service is large.