According to the C.A.R. survey, the individual agent's website is the most important site for internet buyers. This graph was shown during the October 2008 Annual Convention and quickly dismissed as not accurate or not important. Most of the panel's discussion was focused on the meltdown in both the financial and real estate markets. Being a web designer in the real estate industry, I wish they would have discussed this survey a bit more, but I understand how an impending depression can change the focus of most real estate professionals.

I believe that the graph says a lot about the real estate business on the internet, especially when it comes to the individual agent's website. Most real estate agents have their own personal business websites and can control the content of the site, even on the most simplistic template sites. Better templates, semi-custom sites, and fully customs site allow you to control the look and functionality of the site. The more control an agent has over their marketing efforts, the more they can make themselves stand out from the crowd. Local MLS sites only allow you to enter and display certain data, plus you are at the mercy of their formatting and distribution. Most other real estate websites either function like an alternative MLS or pull data from an MLS and repackage it. The agent loses control as soon as a listing is entered.

An agent's website, on the other hand, is a world that they control and are able to form that world in their own image. I'll admit it, there are a lot of terrible real estate websites out there. There is also a ton of duplicate content. Most agent's follow the crowd and have a minimal internet presence. The one's that develop a unique site with content that a potential buyer might find useful are the one's who have a successful web presence. If you are web savvy buyer in today's competitive real estate market, you can basically get the same info from realtor.com, zillow.com, local mls, etc. You probably have visited those sites multiple times before you even think about working with an agent.

Once you make the decision to work with an agent, you want the agent who knows your neighborhood best and can tell you something that you don't know. An agent with detailed neighborhood and sub-neighborhood pages, custom searches, best deals, knowledgable blogs, lots of property and community photos, and local real estate and news info has the most useful website for the buyer. The real estate catch phrase is "Location, Location, Location," and "All Politics is Local." Well, let's conclude that best real estate websites have unique information about locations and listings.