Looking for the best real estate investor websites to get more motivated seller leads?
Having a real estate investor website is more important now than ever. Your customers are already seeking you out online — particularly, through Google. A high-quality website gives your business more visibility, authority and credibility to persuade people to work with you.
If you’re like most investors, then the majority of your marketing has probably been offline – bandit signs, direct mail, cold calling, driving-for-dollars, and maybe even door knocking.
But, now you’re thinking about getting a real estate investor website.
More than likely, you know another investor who’s seeing amazing lead-generation results on their own website and you want a piece of the pie.
Who could blame you?
Follow the cheese, right?
But, of course, there’s a lot to think about when it comes to building your own websites to find investment properties online.
Design, sales copy, SEO, conversion optimization, and backend code are just a few things to consider.
And truthfully, things have changed so much in the past four years alone that what was cutting edge four years ago is almost pre-historic, nowadays.
So, in this article, we’re going to walk you through:
- Why you need a website,
- What you should look for when you’re either building your own real estate investor website,
- Buying a real estate investor website template, or using one of the services out there that helps real estate investors better leverage online marketing.
Let’s get started.
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Why Real Estate Investor Websites Can Have a Major Impact on Business
Don’t get me wrong – offline real estate marketing methods are as powerful today as they were ten years ago. Direct mail, bandit signs, and cold calling can work wonders in the right hands and in the right market.
But…
That doesn’t mean you should limit your marketing strategies to offline tactics exclusively.
In particular, here are some of the reasons all real estate investors need a website.
- Online marketing, once rolling, will save you time and money during the lead-generation process.
- SEO leads (Search Engine Optimization) tend to be higher quality because they’re inbound leads – which is basically just a cute way of saying that prospects came looking for you rather than you looking for them.
- Online and offline marketing strategies work best together. Our highest-performing members at Carrot use both in harmony rather than one in exclusion.
- Build your online and offline credibility. You must separate yourself from the clutter. Having a high-performance, personally optimized website can get you there.
So, you know that you need a website for your real estate business…
But, you’re new to real estate online marketing with a website…
More than likely, you don’t even know where to start…
There are so many options and so many low-end platforms out there that you’re not exactly sure what you need for your real estate investor websites.
So let’s talk.
What Type Of Real Estate Investor Website Should You Pick?
The Internet is full of different options to get a website set up.
Should you have it:
- Buy a template?
- Designed from scratch?
- Or, use a service?
Really, all of those are great options. It just depends on your goals, your budget, and how much flexibility you want with your real estate investing website.
Option 1: Real Estate Investor Website Templates
The definition of a template can vary drastically. At Carrot, a “real estate investor website template” is basically where you buy the website and choose from one of several of our templates. Then, you can customize things like images, videos, and sales copy.
You might be worried that you’re going to look the same as everyone else. Fortunately, that isn’t true. With color changes, logo changes, and other minor customizations, you get all the benefits of conversion optimization without sacrificing your distinguishable brand image.
Real estate investor website templates are great because you can still customize your website but the back-end design is already done for you.
Oftentimes, templates come with your hosting accounts. The first website I built for my real estate business was built from a basic template from our host company.
Now, you can find templates or WordPress themes that give you a look and feel to start from with your own website. You can buy these all the way from the price of “free” (free is all relative… read on below on my thoughts on that) to a couple of hundred bucks.
A template gets you a jumpstart. But with most website templates, you then have to dive in and basically build the site content, structure, lead generation pieces, do the SEO, and conversion testing all from scratch.
These are great for someone who has zero to little (under $20) money to invest in their website, have more time than they do money, and who have some level of technical knowledge (or are willing to learn how to do some basic HTML, image editing, and learn the ins and outs of basic search engine optimization).
What we’re calling a template is when you buy the website files, put them on your own server, and you’re responsible for everything from there on out.
If you choose to buy a website template that’s just a template, though, here are the pros and cons.
Pros:
- Cheap. You can get into a real estate investing website template pretty damn cheap as far as out of pocket expenses. Under $100 usually.
- If you are a technical person or are willing to invest the time into learning how to build a website… this can be a great place to start.
Cons:
- After you get a “template” or WordPress theme… you have to invest the time into building out the content, structuring the site, hiring a web and/or graphics guy to help you finish things out, and then you have to maintain the site and files on your server each month to make sure it’s up-to-date and secure from hackers.
- “Cheap” doesn’t always mean low cost. Whenever we go into a new project we always like to ask the questions… “How much money does this cost? And how much time and effort will it cost us to get it to where we need it?” Too many people only look at how much money they’re paying and forget to value their own time. Oftentimes these template routes cost you many times more than hiring it out or using a service that does it for you.
- The biggest part that determines an effective real estate investing website isn’t necessarily the way it looks… it’s the way it’s structured, the words on the site, and the strategy behind search engine optimizing the site for your keywords. Many templates look pretty, but when it comes to results, don’t deliver.
See Carrot in Action
Grow Your Real Estate Website’s
Traffic, Leads, & Results With Carrot’s Online Marketing Software
Option 2: Create a Website From Scratch
Ok, so there’s always the option of hiring a web designer and having them design you a website for your real estate business from scratch. Truthfully, this is an option that many big players in the real estate game choose (by big players, I mean companies that do multiple million-dollar transactions per year… all the way up to institutional investors). Is this the best route for you?
It may be. If you want 100% control over every detail of your website from start to finish and want custom elements that you just can’t find in pre-made websites… then you’ll want to go the custom real estate investor website route.
You’ll also need to have a consistent budget for hiring a developer and designer to upload new content, make relevant changes, and consistently A/B test your conversion rate. Naturally, that’s going to be a big budget.
Pros:
- You get everything you want exactly as you want it (so long as you can find a solid web designer who knows what they’re doing… this is the biggie).
- Custom means custom… you build it from the ground up with your web guy.
- You can have custom elements or functionality that most real estate investor website templates don’t offer.
- Your site will look 100% unique… i.e. – no one else will have a site exactly like yours.
Cons:
- It can be expensive if you hire a web designer who actually knows what they’re doing. Don’t think you’ll get a quality custom design that will be search engine optimized, look good, and designed to convert your visitors to leads for under $5k.
- If you don’t know how to accurately relay (doing exact mockups of what you’re looking for is best) exactly what you want to a quality web designer… you may end up with something that is nothing like you envisioned (or a huge bill to continually tweak and fix the site until it’s what you wanted).
- As technology improves… you’ll have to pay more to have your website redone to get it up “in the times.”
This is what we actually did for our own business… because we couldn’t find anything on the market that would do what we wanted it to — look clean, crisp, professional, and actually work to generate leads. So we paid a web developer about $7k to build it from scratch for us over 18 months. That soon became the first REItheme (Carrot’s old name) platform… because we saw options didn’t move us… and we felt we had a better solution that we’d love to share with investors like you.
Related Reading: [Compare] Carrot vs. Cheap & Low-Cost Mass Website Builders
Option 3: Real Estate Investor Website Service
This option is kind of a hybrid between a template and a custom-designed website. There are a handful of credible options in the market — all have different pros and cons — many are not so good, a few are solid, and they can be a great way for you to get your real estate investor website up and rolling.
And they aren’t just great because you get your website started, but because these services continue to support your website with SEO, security, conversion testing, and support.
So long as your website exists, these services are ready to give you the support and resources you need to be successful.
Like I mentioned above, a website template is where you buy just the HTML files (or WordPress theme), then you’re left to fend for yourself putting them on your own server, doing the updates and customization yourself, etc.
If you don’t want to do all that work but you also don’t have the budget for a custom website design, you’ll want to look at signing up for a service that has pre-built websites for real estate investors, other fancy features, and you pay either an upfront fee and hosting, or just a monthly fee to access the service.
For many of you, this option will make the most sense. It’s relatively inexpensive and has most the benefits of a custom-designed website and a website template.
Here are all the pros and cons.
Pros:
- Depending on the service you sign up for, you can get websites that looks custom, lets you customize many of the site elements easily. Just make sure you look for a service that lets you have 100% control over the way the site looks and your content… easily.
- May include other features built right in that would cost you thousands to build yourself. Like email marketing systems, squeeze pages, search engine optimized pages (this one is tricky, our real estate investor website system actually does get great search engine results… many systems say they’re SEO’d… but rarely show up in search rankings for their customers. Do your research)
- The service usually maintains the websites on their servers, saving you money, time, and putting the technical stuff in the hands of the techie guys and gals who like that kinda stuff (and are good at it). This helps you so you don’t have to worry about hackers, your site code going out of date, etc).
- You can usually get your websites set up quickly… the same day or within a couple of days for most services.
- Website services also provide you opportunities to gather traffic data from sources such as Google Analytics or custom dashboards, so you can make more informed changes to your website.
- Full-service website builders can also offer custom blog posts, CRMs, training courses, strategy calls, multiple design templates, and are always testing and innovating their product.
- You won’t need to worry about adding plug-ins and potentially messing up your site. Most real estate website providers use custom plug-ins that both add value to your website and eliminate the risk of “breaking” your site.
- They can also offer different templates such as cash buyer websites to list and sell properties faster, rent-to-own tenants websites to fill your rent-to-own / lease purchase houses faster, land buyer or land seller sites, plus many more options.
- Social media integrations. Most services make it easy to post a blog post to Facebook with a simple click of a button.
- Websites are mobile-friendly. Sites don’t just look good on mobile they consistently need to drive more leads and conversions. This is extremely important. Over 64% of Carrot member leads come from mobile devices.
Cons:
- There is usually a monthly (or annual) fee associated with services like this. They can range from $25/mo – $200/mo+ depending on the number of websites and features. But, you just need to decide whether the time it saves you, the features it has, etc. will help you save enough time to offset the cost… or do enough extra deals to pay for the service. Usually, one deal can pay for the service for a lifetime.
- Most services that offer real estate investor websites were built 5+ years ago, look like a 10-year-old made them in his basement, and won’t let you customize your website’s look and feel… or content very easily. Just make sure you do your research to see how easily you can customize your websites and how much you can customize (without paying extra) before you dive in.
See Carrot in Action
Grow Your Real Estate Website’s
Traffic, Leads, & Results With Carrot’s Online Marketing Software
The 5 Best Tools For Real Estate Investor Websites
This question is just as important as the others: what tools should you use to research and build your website and market your business online?
Here are the 5 best tools that we recommend checking out!
1. BiggerPockets (Community)
As you’re doing more research, forums such as BiggerPockets, offer great insights into which real estate investor website is right for you.
2. Mailchimp
Mailchimp is an email marketing service that allows users to build email lists and contact those people all at once. We recommend collecting email addresses on your website and sending out value-add campaigns once a week or a few times every month. This is a great way to keep in contact with your leads.
3. Podio
Here’s how Podio defines itself: “Podio is the CRM tool used by hundreds of realtors, brokers and agents to streamline and simplify the way they do business. Online and mobile, Podio arms your team with all the information they need to find and sell the perfect properties for your clients.”
More specifically, investors can use Podio to arrange meetings, manage prospect relationships, and automate internal workflows.
4. Aweber
Like Mailchimp, Aweber is another email marketing tool that allows users to build an email list and contact lead en masse. Users can also build landing pages, leverage push notifications, and choose from tons of different email design templates.
5. Investorfuse
Investorfuse is a CRM built specifically for real estate investors. You can use it to create automated follow-up systems, manage lead relationships, and organize all of your data.
Real Estate Investing Website Examples
What does a high performing real estate investor website look like?
That’s what we want to share with you here.
At Carrot, we’ve done a lot of research and testing to figure out what website design converts best for real estate investors.
And the easiest way to show you what we’ve found is to show you what our high-converting templates look like. On all of our templates, we include the phone number on the front page, simple navigation, and the opt-in CTA as the primary header.
All of those elements working together get more conversions than any other layout we’ve tested (and we’ve tested a lot of different layouts).
Here’s another example…
And one more…
All of those websites are Carrot sites.
Notice how different they look, but how they all have the same fundamental high-converting elements.
That’s our goal. To give each of our members and fresh look that makes their brand feel unique while also providing a website that actually converts traffic into leads.
Things to Keep in Mind When Creating Real Estate Investor Websites
Regardless of which option you pick to build your real estate investor website, these are the six primary things you should keep in mind.
1. Budget
How much money do you have in your budget?
This will have a big impact on which option you choose. If, for instance, you only want to spend between $500 and $1,000, then a well-designed custom site is probably out of the picture (unless you have a friend who’ll do it for less than usual).
If you are willing to spend $5,000 to $10,000, though, and have a consistent relationship with your web developer (or you have your own tech team) then a custom website might be your best bet.
What you have to also consider when it comes to the budget is how much time the option you choose is going to save you. Don’t just consider how much it’ll cost you…
Consider how much time it’ll save you…
Find a ratio where the money spent, results received, and time saved works in your favor.
Not sure what your per-deal budget is? Use our ROI calculator.
2. Conversion Optimization
You could go find yourself a WordPress website, pay a minimal amount of money, and have your website up and running in the next 5 minutes.
But, you know as well as I that that isn’t what you’re looking for.
You want a website that drives traffic and generates leads passively. WordPress will give you a website, but they won’t promise much more than that… because they won’t give you much more than that.
Having a website doesn’t equal being a great online marketer.
You don’t just need a website. You need a website that’s built to convert visitors who arrive on it at a consistent and promising rate. At Carrot, we specialize in building just those kinds of websites.
3. Design
Yes, you want a website that converts visitors and drives results. And you definitely want a website that falls within your budget.
But… it’d be nice to have a website that looks pretty too…
Or at least a website that appropriately expresses that you’re a professional who knows what you’re doing, not some sort of scammer looking for innocents to exploit.
A WordPress website might get you a nice-looking website, but it definitely won’t be optimized for conversion. And a custom-built website is just so darn expensive and difficult to maintain.
4. Load Speed
The faster that your website loads, the better chance that people will stick around to see what you have to offer. With a slow website, though, people will leave before you can shout, “Give me a chance!”
In fact, 40% of people will leave your website if it doesn’t load in just 3 seconds.
That’s a big chunk of your visitors – almost half!
How do you know if the website you choose loads fast?
Well, the easiest way is to go over to PageSpeed Insights and test it for free yourself. Or you can just get yourself a Carrot website and guarantee fast load speeds. :-)
5. Search Engine Optimization
When it comes to driving traffic to your website, nothing is quite as powerful as search engine optimization. Basically, this SEO for real estate is the practice of optimizing your website to drive passive traffic through search engine queries (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc).
And it can be an absolutely business-changing strategy for your real estate investor website. By optimizing your website for search engines, you don’t just set yourself up to drive traffic today (like with paid ads), but well into the future.
So long as you rank in Google, you’ll drive traffic.
A big part, though, of driving passive traffic to your real estate investor website via SEO is the backend coding of your website and the keyword placement. Most website companies will just give you… well, a website.
At Carrot, though, we give you a website that’s primed and ready to rank in search engines. Which means passive traffic for your website and more revenue for your business.
Free SEO Keyword Bible Download
6. Features
What do you want to be able to do with your website? Do you need any specific integrations that fit with your email service provider or with your direct mail service?
Make sure you pick a website builder that includes all the features you’re going to want a few months from now.
With Carrot, for instance, you can do tons of cool stuff. You can add a credibility bar to your website with just a few clicks.
You can change the style of your homepage opt-in form between three different styles, you can quickly upload your logo and custom brand images, and you customize your sales copy as much as you like.
If you sign up for the Content Pro or Advanced Marketer plan, then we even provide you with blog content every single month for your website. That means you get more chances to rank in Google (and possibly drive free traffic to your website) and it means your website will feel more active to visitors.
You can learn more about Carrot’s features over here.
So, Get Out There and Get Your Real Estate Investor Websites Rolling!
Alrighty, now that you know the 3 options out there for websites for real estate investors and the 6 things you should take into consideration… now it’s time for you to do a bit of research on your own to see what’s right for you.
Here’s a quick little guide to help you make that decision.
Pick the one that fits you best.
1. Technical (can do graphics and do some HTML or PHP) have a lot of spare time, have a very low budget (under $100 total). A Template may be a great route for you to go. Go to google and search “real estate investor website templates” to see what you come up with.
2. Have a hunk of cash (at least $3k – $7k), know exactly what you want and can relay that in detail to a sharp web developer, have found or can find a sharp web designer who has experience (and can show you samples and client testimonials) on website conversion and search engine optimization. If this is you, you may look at having your site built from scratch by a web designer.
3. Want custom features but don’t want to pay thousands, want the ability to customize your site so it can look unique, don’t want to learn the ins and outs of SEO or web design and would rather piggyback on those who have created systems that do it already.
They would rather have someone else take care of the heavy technical work so you can focus on doing deals… you may want to look at website services like Carrot.
In full disclosure, you’re on the Carrot blog… and we are a company (started by real estate investors) that created a website system because we felt the options out there didn’t meet the needs of real estate investors. But, with that said, we don’t want to “trick” people into going with our service… because we know that our service isn’t right for everyone and frankly, we don’t want to work with everyone.
We Believe in total transparency – It’s one of our core values.
So, do your research… find the solution that is best for you. If it’s Carrot… awesome! If it’s not, awesome! All we care about is that you find the solution that fits your needs for your real estate investing business.
And if you have any questions, feel free to throw em’ in the comments. :-)
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