Realogy franchisor Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate says it’s integrating lifestyle and community data-based search and sort into BHGRE.com and its affiliated brokers’ websites, and will roll out individual agent websites with the same features in the first quarter of 2015.
Lifestyle search lets buyers search for homes using criteria like neighborhoods, schools and drive time to work. Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate claims its national website, BHGRE.com, offers the “friendliest search in real estate.” Making the platform available to brokers and agents helps them stay competitive on the Web, the company says.
“Consumers are buying homes based on lifestyle requirements, but the way real estate search is done online had not yet evolved to meet that reality,” said Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate CEO Sherry Chris in a statement. “There are many sites out there, but fundamentally they all behave the same way. We have created a site that will forever change the search paradigm.”
Chris Masiello, president and CEO of Keene, New Hampshire-based Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate The Masiello Group, said next year’s launch of the brand’s agent websites will “be a significant advantage in our talent attraction, productivity and retention strategies.”
Partnering with INRIX (which powers the platforms’ search-by-commute-time capabilities) and Onboard Informatics (a provider of school, neighborhood and community data), the franchisor has built a website that delivers all brand-generated leads directly into a lead routing process that integrates with its customer relationship management (CRM) system.
Like other Realogy franchisors, Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate plans to integrate the ZipRealty technology platform acquired by Realogy this year to generate more Internet leads and increase its agents’ lead conversion rates.