Using Price Changes to Advertise Listings

If you think carefully about how technology works in real estate, you understand that price changes trigger events that alert real estate agents and consumers.

Take a look at this image taken from Trulia.com on a Century 21 Hometown listing.

If you look carefully, you will notice that this agent did a price adjustment in October, but beginning in November, she began to reduce the price by about $500 a week. Here is what happens as a result.

In the MLS, this home will appear once a week in the MLS Hot Sheet under “Price Reductions.” It is likely that a large volume of agents will take a look at the home each time. For agents working with buyers, it will serve as a gentle reminder about the property.

There is a wider, more viral impact that occurs on third party listing websites like Trulia, pictured here, as well as Zillow, Century21.com, Realtor.com and other popular consumer websites. All of these sites display the discount price like a “Sale” sticker – appealing to the notion of a motivated seller.

Saved Searches in the MLS and on agent and broker IDX websites are also impacted by this price-reducing feature. All of these saved search solutions notify consumers whenever there is new listing that matches their search criteria, or whenever a listing matching their search criteria has new information (like a price reduction).

The overarching impact of these small price modifications is that the listing gets displayed persistently to the widest possible audience in an automated way.