How to Deal with Buyers Who Love Property Portals

Ask any agent, and they're likely to agree: the Realtor-client relationship became more complicated when property search portals came onto the scene.

Rather than relying on agents to find a home, today 51 percent of consumers find the home they buy online themselves, typically on search portals. And once consumers start using a home search platform, they seldom switch to another, even if their agent recommends it. This worries many Realtors, as their clients are exposed to competing agents while browsing property portals.

But it's clear that property search portals are here to stay—and that consumers love them—so what's an agent to do?

For veteran Realtor and broker Jesse Zagorsky, the answer is threefold:

1. Understand client behavior
2. Adapt to client behavior, don't change it
3. Educate

Zagorsky has years of experience in advertising on sites like Realtor.com® and managing portal leads. Here's his practical advice for dealing with portal loving clients.

The First Step to Success: Understanding Client Behavior

Realtors have a new role in the digital age, according to Zagorsky. "The value proposition has changed," he says. "Our role as an agent is not as much just to find the house as it is in executing all of the other elements of the process."

In fact, you may have experienced, as Zagorsky has, a client that came to you with a listing from their property app or portal of choice—even though you know you already sent that to them in an MLS alert.

"Once a buyer starts a pattern of search, they prefer to go back and look on their own again on the first site they tried," he says. "They still like to find it themselves. So we don't fight that."