The real estate industry is booming with the economy gaining strength, but it sure has changed a lot since I first started selling homes twelve years ago. They say knowledge is power, and while the internet has opened up new doors in how you can market your home for sale or find that dream home you are hoping to buy, there are many tools that are helpful that are free.
In order to keep your clients happy, you have to be able to save them time and money in the rental process. That’s where a real estate rental site comes in handy. It takes a lot of hard work getting a site going, but once you’ve created all the listings, you’ll want some free tools to help your search for potential tenants go a lot more smoothly. Here’s a list of my own favorite tools for creating a successful real estate rental site.
Best Free Marketing Tool for Real Estate Agents
Real Estate Agent Directory
The Real Estate Agent Directory (READ) has been busy this year adding new and expanded free features. First, it has added several new MLSs to nearly all agents across the US to have acess to automatic featured listing pages. These pages can be easily be shared to social media or emailed to interested parties. Agents can also opt in to sharing their listings on the brand new myagentdirectory.com for even more free exposure.
The Real Estate Agent Directory (READ) also added a new digital business card feature. This allows agents to generate and automatically post a virtual business card to their Facebook page up to twice a month. This feature coupled with the Page Poster tool can save a lot of time for agents looking for things to post to Facebook.
The perks don’t end there though. READ members get access to a nationwide referrals network, too. Plus, they receive access to one of the largest moderated real estate agent groups on Facebook where they can pose questions and get advice from other agents around the country. As far as free marketing tools for real estate agents go, READ is a no brainer.
Best Free Project Management Tool For Real Estate Agents
Clickup
Over the past year, Clickup has gained significant investment to put them even further ahead other organizational tools like Trello. At its core,Clickup lets you organize tasks plus any relevant information into lists and spaces of related tasks. In addition to its constantly improving workflow management tools, it has also added built in documents, chat, and more.
So let’s say you’re a broker handling a team of agents. You can have a list of tasks you assign to all of the people you manage. As tasks progress towards completion, people can add status updates so you can check in easily at any time. Need a little more info? Leave a comment or pop into a chat so that all of the discussion about a task stays in one place that you can refer to later if needed. Plus, with documents, you can have important info available for people in one place.
Of course, this only scratches the surface of what Clickup can do because it is so insanely customizable. I could write an entire article telling you about all of the customization options for everything from project statuses to dashboards. What makes Clickup especially incredible is that you get a ton of features used by Fortune 500 companies for free.
Best Free Data Tool for Real Estate Agents
Realtor’s Property Resource (RPR)
Last year, we showed you how to use Realtors Property Resource (RPR) to create CMAs for free, but that only scratches the surface of what RPR can do. NAR created RPR to give its members easy access to all kinds of property data from flood zones to taxes to schools and everything in between.
This data can be used for creating listing presentations, relocation packets, and a lot more. NAR also offers free iOS and Android apps, so it can be handy for fielding questions during showings and open houses, too.
Best Free Website Builder for Real Estate Agents
WordPress.com
Over 40% of all websites on the internet are built on an underlying technology called WordPress. WordPress.com allows you to build a website using that same platform for free. This gives agents the ability to get stake out their own corner of the web inexpensively, and then the site can be easily transported to other hosts when you’re ready to upgrade.
Of course, there are a couple of limitations on the free plan. First, the site will not include its own web domain, so your site’s web address will be something.wordpress.com unless you upgrade to a paid plan. The other drawback is that your site will contain an floating bar encouraging others to build a site on wordpress.com at the top of each page. Fortunately, paid plans start at as little as $4 per month if you decide to upgrade.
Since it’s so popular, WordPress has a huge system of themes and plugins that let you customize your website, too. That means you can often create a great looking website for less effort, and you can also make a WordPress site do nearly everything you’d want. Again, under the free plan you’ll be limited in some regards, but the same is true with any free website on other platforms.
Best Free WordPress Plugin for Real Estate Agents
Easy MLS Listings Import
Speaking of WordPress…If you have a WordPress site, you need this tool. Easy MLS Listings Import is a free WordPress plugin that lets you easily add your listings to your website. Best of all, once you finish initial setup your listings update themselves based on the latest MLS data (which gets refreshed several times an hour).
So you have a new listing? Your website updates itself. Price reduction? Updates itself. Under contract? Updates itself. Off the market? You get the idea.
Best Free Graphics Tool for Real Estate Agents
Canva
Maybe you have a graphic designer on hand to create flyers and social media posts for you. For the rest of us, Canva can be a great free alternative. Canva has hundreds of templates for commonly needed graphics including Instagram posts, presentations, and more.
Canva has a wide range of available templates, but they do tend to be modern and trendy designs. So it may not be a fit for every audience or brand. Fortunately, Canva’s editing tool gives you the ability to customize each design to suit your needs.
Trello: Project management
As they work to build their brands, real estate agents are constantly juggling multiple clients, listings, and tasks in different stages of development. Instead of relying on your paper to-do list or hiring an assistant to keep track of it all, consider using a project management tool like Trello.
Trello lets users create “boards” to help them organize and prioritize all the projects they’re working on. One REALTOR® told us how she uses Trello to manage her day-to-day:
“I have a running to-do list and a list of long-term projects. And then I have lists for active clients, buyer prospects, and listing prospects. Within all those, I have cards based on a checklist template for paperwork, and also the steps to take once I get them under contract. Every time I add a prospect, I copy the template card and add the information.”
Trello’s free version offers a ton of features, including unlimited boards, lists, cards, members, checklists, and attachments. Paid plans add integrations with other tools like GSuite and Evernote, as well as some administrative tools for collaborating with your team.
Conclusions
A Realtor can tell you that the right tools are crucial to an efficient selling or buying process. So much time is wasted hunting for listing information when it could be saved in one place. A real estate agent also probably knows that finding the right data about comparable property values can save them hours of time in finding just what they need to get the job done. And of course, a lot of time will be saved if a tool can organize and track paperwork, view home stats, or just help with the printing out of contracts using a virtual printer. If you’re a realtor looking for real estate software there are a lot of options out there for just your needs!