Bellingham Open Houses Goes Online
Move over Bellingham Herald, competition has arrived via the Internet for weekend open houses in the Bellingham, WA & the greater Whatcom County area. Realtors are starting to advertise their open houses on their own web sites instead of with the local print media all the time.
Eventually, some entrepreneur will create a web site that serves the Whatcom County open house market displaying open houses to the public. They could make the service available to any local Realtor advertising weekend open houses in the Whatcom County area. They could also make it available to for sale by owners and really provide a service that is needed in the market place today.
As a Realtor in the local market, I can definetly see a niche that is currently being filled only by the local newspaper. Unlike the newspaper though, a new Whatcom County open house site could provide a lot more detail about the home and provide several photos. With the paper you get a small ad & photo in the Sunday open house section. They also put the ad copy on line under the company’s web site’s open house section.
It is a little frustrating with the high cost of advertising in the local paper and I think it would be a great alternative medium for local Realtors to advertise weekend open houses. Once traffic on the website increases, the propreiter could sell adverting on the site to off-set the expense of promoting the site in the local paper, thus keeping Realtors costs to a minimum. I don’t think it would replace the ads in the local paper, but who knows with way the internet has proceeded. It would just be nice to have a great alternative with a much richer medium for buyers and sellers.
With the shelf life of a daily newspaper being so short and the internet being a never ending vehicle…maybe change is in the wind. At some point a local open house site will come on-line and provide a service that is really needed right now and give the Bellingham herald a run for their money. That would be a very welcome change when it does happen. I think it will be hard to beat with all the information one could provide to the to the viewing public thru a top notch web site.
Visit Bellingham Sunday open houses on my local real estate site.
Jerry Campbell - Bellingham WA Real Estate - The Muljat Group - Bellingham, WA 98225