RSS Feeds are one of the big new technologies of the decade. For real estate agents understanding the platform that today’s agencies depend upon for their success is critical and that platform is the Internet.  RSS feeds are a big deal and by using this technology to engage buyers, renters and even vendors will mean you are one step ahead of your competition.
<blockquote>RSS solves a problem for people who regularly use the web. It allows these people to easily stay informed by retrieving the latest content from your sites that they are interested in.</blockquote>
RSS Feeds save time by users not needing to visit your website to keep up to date with all of your latest listings and news and media releases. If you want to learn more about RSS click here. If you want to subscribe to an RSS feeds you will need the latest free browser from Firefox (best on planet) or Internet Explorer 7.

Microsoft are also about to release its new Windows Live Mail Platform that includes its own feed reader and this will supersede Outlook Express. The Windows Vista Platform also has RSS feed reading as a new feature and this allow users to subscribe to content directly from the desktop.

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So you want to have the best real estate site n your area? I am sure you understand the basics but here are some hints to get you there.

1. Information Everywhere:
Engage a service (or build your own) that controls all of your property data in one place and build a tool set that makes it easy for you distribute that data via XML data feeds. Any developer worthy of the name ‘developer’ could do this – however there aren’t as many who say they can do it that can actually do it. The second thing you need to do is join sites that you can distribute the data to. There are many that cost money, but there will be more and more that are free.

Here is a list of National sites for Australia and New Zealand:

Fee Based Services:
1. http://realestate.com.au (au)
2. http://domain.com.au (au)
3. http://realestate.co.nz (nz)
4. http://realenz.co.nz (nz)
5. http://allrealestate.co.nz (nz)
6. http://homehound.com (au) (FREE)

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There are many ways to make your real estate website more effective, however here I just want to speak about the basics. These are of no particular order although usability is number one for a reason.

1. Usability
The majority of visitors to your site come to get property information, so make sure you make it as easy as possible to get to the information they want. If you have less than 50-60 properties at any one time, ditch the search facility and just provide a nice clean informative list of your properties. In other words, don’t waste your visitors time. A user of your site should be able to get whereever they want on your site from wherever they are.

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