Real Estate Investor Websites – What You Need And Don’t

Over the past couple years we’ve got lots of questions from REIbrain subscribers about real estate investor websites … you know, your website for your real estate investing business.

The most questions come from people asking questions like:

• What real estate investor website service do you recommend?
• What do I need on my website?
• What websites do I need for my real estate investing business?
• What’s really important to have in a real estate investing website?
• Why do I really need a website for my real estate investing business?

So, we usually just throw people back our feedback when they email us these questions… but since it’s a question we have so much… I wanted to write a post on it.  So, in this post we’ll help you answer all of the above and more 🙂

Why Do I Really Need a Website For My Real Estate Investing Business?

So, let me first qualify this question… you DON’T NEED a website.  I know really high level real estate investors who have $50 million+ portfolios of multi-family properties who don’t have an active publicly viewable website. So, you don’t need a site in all circumstances in real estate.  (to clarify here… I said “active publicly viewable” website… they have websites, but only send the link to people they’re actively working with… they don’t use websites to generate leads or anything. 100% for credibility.)

You need to look at your business model and see if having a website can help you. Here’s a few ways a real estate investor website system can help a real estate business:

• Build credibility online (i.e. – point people there so they can learn about you better. Private lenders, buyers, etc.)
• Generate leads online (i.e. – have a place to drive cash buyers, motivated sellers, and even private lenders to online so you can capture their info and follow up with them late)
• Become an expert in your area (i.e. – use a blog and content to position yourself as an expert)
• To show you’re a real business (i.e. – some people think a company isn’t real unless they have a site)

Again, if you’re a very high level investment firm who does millions in transactions or multi-family or commercial… your website will be much different… mainly for building credibility with lenders and investors (not generating leads usually) than if you are running a wholesaling, rehabbing, etc. company where you need to generate buyer and seller leads through your website.

So, now you know what kind of website you’ll need for your business model… keep on reading for the good stuff 🙂

What’s Really Important To Have In Your Real Estate Investor Websites

There is a debate here among people on what’s really needed in your real estate investor website. But, in the end… there is no hard and fast rule on what you really need to have.  It depends on what business model you’re running.

If you are wholesaling or rehabbing real estate… you’ll want something that gets motivated seller leads (and educates motivated sellers on your process and why they should work with you) and cash buyer leads (and shows them properties and gets them on your cash buyers list) and ultimately building credibility for your business.

So for the wholesaling and rehabbing business models you’ll need:

• A site that grabs attention from buyers and another one geared for just sellers... that guides those separate target prospects through a certain process to complete an end goal. For a buyers list site… the end goal is getting people on your cash buyers email list.  For a motivated sellers site the end goal is to get a seller to submit their property information to you so you can followup with them.
• A lead generation ability… that gives value to people in exchange for their email address (and other info) so you can follow up with them.  A free report, a video series, access to your VIP Cash Buyers list, a newsletter on the local real estate market, etc.  Ideally you have the website designed so on every page people have a call to action to convert to a lead.  Even better, have what I call “Lead Pages” (others call them squeeze pages) that are 100% geared at converting a visitor to a lead.
  

  Example of a Landing Page: Source: REItheme.com

• A clean / professional site design (i.e. – not hokey and looking like an 11 year old did it in 1997 in their basement)… a first impression means a lot. You’ll want your site to represent your business the way you want to be perceived. If your site looks hacked together and amateurish… people will think your business is the same. Now, I’m not saying it has to be fancy and flashy… sometimes the best sites are the ones that are clean, not a lot of flashy graphics, and simple.
• A property listing engine so you can sell properties… this is a biggie. It’s tough to sell properties if you don’t have your own website to direct people back to you. So you’ll want to be able to list properties, show a Google Map of the property, and have a way for people to take action on the property quickly.
  

  Listing your properties online is an important feature you'll want to look for.

• An email marketing ability... I’m not going to get crazy detailed on this… but you’ll want to be able to build an email list. So, your website should make it easy to collect email addresses and put them into an email list that you can send emails to whenever you have new properties, etc.
• A blog attached to the website… This is a personal preference… but I feel all websites (if you want to get free search engine traffic and build yourself as an authority) need a blog.  It doesn’t have to be complicated or fancy… just a place you can post articles weekly, videos, content.  We’ve generated millions of free visitors to our websites over the years 100% because we have blogs attached to them. Without the blogs and putting great content on them at least once a week… that traffic wouldn’t be there and neither would the profits. As a real estate investor you can write posts about the local real estate market, videos on projects you’re working on, educational posts on how to do a rehab or how to fix your credit, etc. Anything your target customer would benefit from seeing.

Really, it may sound like a lot… but thats all your site really NEEDS in my opinion.

Now, there are  other things that it’s awesome to have on your site that are big benefits like social media sharing ability (Facebook, Google +, Twitter, etc.), search engine optimization for real estate investors tools to help you rank better, etc.  Our sister company, REITheme has put all of those tools into the real estate investor online lead generation system they developed this year… check it out over there when you get a chance.

What’s Not Really All That Important In A Real Estate Website System?

Some people will agree… others will disagree here… but there are some real estate investor websites out there that have tons of cool bells and whistles that really make the price add up.

Things that are cool but truly unnecessary in a website system for most people are:

• Bagillions of real estate investor website templates to choose from – Why? Because templates suck… and most people don’t ever change their template so everyones site ends up looking exactly the same.  It’s better if you have one or two foundation “templates”… but then make sure your site lets you get creative and customize it fully. i.e. – Customize the colors of the site to your exact business branding, uploading your own logo, changing the content and images to anything you want. etc. I wouldn’t look for a site that offers a ton of “templates”… find a site that lets you truly fully customize your site look and feel from the ground up easily.
• Tons of “Landing Page” templates – Same as above… but this time more important. More isn’t always better. Landing Pages (or Lead Pages) are simple… and you don’t need more than a couple options.  A company that provides websites should know which landing page designs tend to convert the best… and only give you those ones.  So, if you see a company providing 10+ landing page (squeeze page) designs… you should wonder if they even know which ones convert the best… and if they did… why would they give you the ones that don’t convert very good as a choice?
• Anything having anything to do with a Zillow score… I’ve seen some websites have a Zillow scoring system to help evaluate properties… which is very slick and semi useful. But, in the end… Zillow isn’t ever a real reliable property valuation tool when you’re trying to make money in real estate… and I feel adding any Zillow scores only complicates the valuation process. Why throw in a score that we all know is inaccurate?  Just me.  We all do our own deal valuation offline anyway (with our realtors, or an appraiser, or a comprehensive online deal evaluator service) so most serious investors won’t use the deal valuator in website systems anyhow.  But yes, they are cool to have.  (a deal calculator on the other hand is valuable if its the right one).
• A private money lender website…  Private lender attracting websites were pretty popular and we still get asked all of the time at our sister company REItheme about if we provide those sites. The answer is no.  Why?  Honestly we used to. That was how we really started REItheme in the first place… doing just private lender websites for investors. But, with the tightening of the SEC on marketing and general solicitations… having a website dedicated to just private lenders is getting more and more dangerous for the average real estate investor.  There are so many guidelines that have to be followed very strictly otherwise you’d risk having the SEC knock on your door.  Certain state SEC registrations that may have to be made and on and on.  If you plan on having a website that is geared 100% toward generating private lender leads… you’ll for sure want to make sure a competent Securities attorney who has years of experience in real estate law looks over your website to make sure you’re in line.  How do I know this so well?  My state SEC contacted me a couple years back about my own private lender website that was online.  Everything ended up fine… but there was so much that would have had to be done with the website that it just made more sense to take it down.

  So what do you do to attract private lenders then? Our SEC attorney advises to just use your main company website as a credibility tool.  Drive private lenders there so they can learn about you, see you’re a real company with real people, put projects you’ve done on there, your team members, have a simple “Investments” page that you send people to if they’re interested… thats about it.  My buddy who has done over $50 million in multi-family deals in the last 4 years uses that exact same model… and funds almost every deal he does partly with private investors. So, your main work should be done offline with your private lenders… then send them to your main website so they can learn more about you.  Yes, you can get private lender leads randomly from a private lender focused website… but if you take that route hire a competent SEC attorney to help you craft every word on that website.

• [GREAT TIP:  A really killer way to generate great private lender leads is through your cash buyers website. With our REItheme website lead system we have forms built in so that when cash buyers join your buyers list… we also give them the option of saying whether they’d be interested in also lending their money for your real estate deals if the right deals came by. Your cash buyers list is a goldmine for private lenders… build your website (or use a system like REItheme) that has that built into your cash buyer signup forms. ]

Do I Need Multiple Websites Or Just One As A Real Estate Investor?

I went into this a bit in the epic novel above… but I’ll recap here.

If you’re in the business of marketing to motivated sellers to get houses and cash buyers to sell houses… yes, I’d highly suggest you have a site for each purpose… plus one main company website possibly that would just act as your main hub for your business (the site you’d put on your business card that explains what you guys do, has the “Investors” page, etc.

But, really its up to you. I’ve seen people use their cash buyer website as their main website… which is totally fine too. The big thing that I feel really strongly about is that your MOTIVATED SELLER site should be a site of its own.  You don’t want your motivated sellers… some guy in foreclosure to come to a site that on one hand says you’ll buy their house… then on the same site just a click away it shows you selling houses to other people at discounts.  Confuses the message to the motivated seller.  One site, one purpose.

When One Site Is Enough

Like I said above, I know investors who just have a main company credibility site… thats it. But, they aren’t in the wholesaling business. They’re usually in commercial real estate, multi-family, and those sites are mainly to build credibility for the company for when lenders, brokers, etc. research their company… they find that site.

So… in simple terms:

• Wholesaling/Rehabbing/etc. – Get a site for attracting motivated sellers, another for cash buyers, and suggested but not required… a third to act just as a main company credibility site (but like I said, your cash buyers site can do that as well)
• Multi-Family / Commercial – Usually you’ll just need the one site. To build credibility, tell what you do, show your projects, show the leadership team, and maybe have a portal where people can see vacancies you have so they can lease them. (and as always, a blog attached to it is a great idea… and you should be generating leads somehow).

What Real Estate Investor Websites Do We Recommend?

There’s lots of choices out there.  We actually wrote a whole blog post about the different choices and how to make a decision over on our sister site REItheme. Check out that post here << .

But, in the end… just determine what’s really important to you and will get you the result you want to get.

Don’t always look for the one with the most bells and whistles and “done for you” stuff… you’ll probably end up not using 95% of the bells and whistles.

Focus on making sure the site:

• A clean, professional, up to date, and simple design (if it looks like crap, your business will look like crap too)
• Flexible and you can customize it. That’s a huge pet peeve… when you get a site and you can’t really make it look the way you want (i.e. – upload your own logo easily, change your colors, content, background image, etc… yourself without having to hire anyone).
• Is geared for search engine optimization. Many say they are… most aren’t.  A website isn’t “search engine optimized” without doing anything. A site can be built on search engine friendly code… but it takes some knowhow and customization to get a site really ranked in your market.  Our REItheme service does a manual search engine optimization to all members sites for their local market when you sign up… here’s some results. Great stuff.
• Does what you need it to do and not a whole lot more. Don’t pay for a bunch of bells and whistles you won’t use. Most successful investors I know don’t use online tools to analyze deals… they usually use custom spreadsheets or dig in manually.  Same goes for motivated seller leads. Some have great leads… some deliver the same leads thousands of other users are also getting and marketing to.
• Lets you fully customize the content so you can control what your site says. Yes, its great to have a site with content on it already… it gives you a solid start… but always dive in and customize the content a bit so it fits your business specifically
• Has crazy good support. There are several companies in the market that have great support.  Make sure you can get responses within 24 hours, can get help when you need it, etc.

Check out this post we did on our REITheme site reviewing the top 5 real estate investor websites companies we’ve found… one being our own REItheme Lead Gen Website system we just released this month.

Of course we’re biased to our own system, REItheme… but there are both great options out there and terrible options.  Our real estate investor websites fit a lot of real estate investors great… but won’t be perfect for a lot too.  REItheme mainly focuses on helping you build the best online presence for your real estate investing business possible… and on the SEO and lead generation side of things.