Ontario, Canada  The Private Real Estate Market

Why can't we all just get along?

I have been inundated with numbers.  These numbers were the number of web site hits that PropertyGuys have claimed publicly, as well as some more objective numbers (from comScore.com) that I was sent in an email from a representative of ByTheOwner.com

Since then, I have found a reasonable measuring stick to hold up against these companies.  There is a handy web site that I was informed of called Alexa.com  This site allows anyone to compare the traffic to a number of web sites, and gives you a pretty little graph of the whole thing too.  Seeing as I couldn't get any evidence of PropertyGuys  claims, I decided to use this site to see how the top FSBOs stack up against mls and how that compares to the real estate industry standard  MLS.ca (and REALTOR.ca).

In my very first email communication with the local PropertyGuys franchisee, I was told that:

 We have over 100 franchises across Canada.  As a result we have approximately 52 million hits to our site a month. This is very comparable to MLS, which has about 60 million hits per month. 

Seems like a pretty apples-to-apples comparison, doesn't it?  Now, if you have a lot of web and computer knowledge like I do, you might just agree that the term hits can be misleading.  Even still, the comparison that  was given   is normallye main reason why a consumer would  decided to pay PropertyGuys to market their home for sale on their web site  was because they claimed to get very similar web site traffic as MLS.ca.

Now, unfortunately I can't give you accurate web site stats without physically or electronically breaking into the corporate servers of these places and checking for myself.  But what I can offer are comparisons that will show you the scale of the difference in traffic between various sites.  Finally, an  apples to apple to apples comparison.

By the way, before you read on, I have tried numerous times to get PropertyGuys to substantiate their claim with some hard evidence.  I still welcome it, but from everything I've seen and experienced so far, I don t see how there is any way that their comparison is valid.

Graph 1: Comparison of FSBOs

My interpretation: PropertyGuys and ByTheOwner have been duking it out for quite a while.  GreyBruceListings and OntarioPLS aren't even on the radar.

Graph 2: PropertyGuys vs. MLS

My Interpretation: It doesn t take a data analyst to see that there is a huge, and I mean HUGE difference in the amount of traffic received by MLS.ca and PropertyGuys.com.  I also gather that if you want to sell real estate in Canada,

I'd still like to see some traffic statistics similar to what you would see with Google Analytics, or Webalizer.  Unfortunately, PropertyGuys would need to come forth with this information, and so far they have not been forthcoming.

Oh, and since this post is largely about those big pretty graphs above I'd love to know why the PropertyGuys web site only provides a counter.  Yes, a simple counter straight out of the late  90s.  No historical information, no demographic information, no graphs   and get this: it even counts a hit when *I* view the listing!

So, what now?  If those property marketing guys aren't living up to their promises, where does one turn?  To a professional Realtor who takes the time to have a strategic marketing strategy call me!!!