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When it comes to selling your house, there seem to be hundreds of things to take are of. And if it feels that way to you, that’s a good thing, because it means you’ll likely prepare your home for its best showing possible. But what about the real estate listing itself?

Real estate agents and brokers may claim that they are limited to the constraints of their multiple listing service, and perhaps within that system they are, but don’t fall for the notion that all agency websites are the same. Some sites present their real estate listings much better than others. With that in mind, here are five things you’ll want to look for online, when you’re consider which agency to utilize in selling your home!

1. Mapping

When Mapquest and Google Maps made their work publicly accessible, it took a few years for websites and businesses to adopt the new technology. But now mapping is expected in nearly every type of location-based search online. If your real estate listing doesn’t have a map, it’s an extra step your potential buyer needs to take. And in this game, extra steps are bad.

2. Overview

Every listing needs a solid and positively written overview. Check the agency’s other listings. Are they concise, but enthusiastic? Are other houses described as you’d like yours described?

3. Communities

Even buyers without children want to know about the community that they might be moving into. They might want crime information or something as simple as a Walkscore rating, depending on their particular needs and fears.

4. Photos

This goes without saying. Any agency without photos should not be used.

5. Phone numbers

In the era of smartphones, it’s odd that people often resort to email and texting before making a phone call. But when it comes to booking a real estate appointment, phone numbers are vital. If your agency doesn’t have someone handling the phones (ideally your specific agent), then it’s going to miss out on buyers. Especially first-time buyers, who are particularly nervous and need help.

If you’re lucky, you’ll find an experienced agency with a website that serves up all five of these elements and gives you your best chance at selling your property. If your prospective agent doesn’t do these things, ask if he or she can. If the answer is no, move on.

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The real estate industry seemed to go an entire century with very little change to the way it fundamentally operated. If you wanted to get a new place, you found a real estate agent, drove to see apartments or houses, picked one, and sealed the deal.

If you wanted to sell that place later, the same agent helped you by putting it on a listing exchange. But times have changed … and they’re still changing.

Here are three technologies that are driving innovations that have occurred in the real estate industry, or are on their way here!

1. Smartphones

It would be hard to narrow down smartphone functions to one word, because the many ways that smartphones have disrupted the real estate market are vast. You can walk past a property, search for it with a mobile application, find photos of the interior, and dig up former sales prices, tax assessments, and sales contract status — all online.

You can call the agent as well, although in this app-crazed world, many people seem to have forgotten that functionality!

2. Digital signing

First there was the fax machine, which drastically reduced the time it took to conduct real-estate transactions. And though fax machines eventually achieved a network effect that drove high usage rates, they’re becoming obsolete, thanks to digitally signed documents.

Now it’s as easy as signing the screen of your smartphone to buy, sell, or lease a property.

3. Blogs and content

Blogs are hugely abundant and constantly growing, so content is becoming more focused. Thanks to blog frameworks that are easy to replicate, the time it takes to set up a blog has diminished to the point where it can be done in five minutes.

Content creation, as a result, has exploded. And when there’s more content, the nature of competition dictates that consumers will expect a higher quality and more relevant content from the blogs they choose to follow.

A great example of this can be found in the Clinton Hell’s Kitchen real estate website that’s operated by a local office of Keller Williams. On this site, you’ll find not only real estate listings for the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood, but all kinds of specialized content that should be helpful to consumers who are considering a move to that neighborhood.

When websites were harder to build and information was less connected online, this type of content would be fairly rare. But today and tomorrow, we should expect this type of excellence in every real estate market in the developed world!

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