Finally in syndication

The Pacific Southwest Association of Realtors(PSAR) today announced a strategic initiative that will provide to millions of consumers in the United States, as well as to buyers in international markets, easy access to PSAR-member property listings online. The move is designed to bolster member benefits and enable better quality of service and consumer experience online.

The undertaking is in the advanced stages of development and is planned to go live by the end of March.

A first in San Diego County, one of the nation’s largest, most desirable residential and second home vacation destinations, the new initiative will give PSAR’s 1,500 broker and agent members a significant competitive advantage through efficient branding and listing exposure on the web, at no additional cost to them.

Under the program, all PSAR members will be able to selectively publish and update listings across Point2 Technologies’ (www.Point2Agent.com) industry-leading syndication and re-syndication partner network of nearly 40 high traffic real estate portals and search engines, and nearly 300 U.S. national and regional newspaper Web sites, with a single click of the mouse.

“It is extremely rewarding for PSAR to lead San Diego County with an important initiative such as syndication, combining tremendous new benefits for PSAR members with heightened service levels for consumers looking for the help and expertise of a local realtor,” said Mark Marchand, chief executive officer, Pacific Southwest Association of Realtors(r). “We are pleased to have chosen Point2 for this critical endeavor. Their teams took the lead on the project and made the process seem effortless.”

“Distribution of listing information to various Web portals such as Google, Yahoo!, Trulia, Zillow and others is a far more efficient and cost effective way to garner exposure for property than trying to persuade consumers to go to any one Web site or Web portal in particular.

“This is evident when you consider that the number one, most visited real estate Web site in the world, realtor.com, with all of its efforts and brand recognition, only receives 6 to 8 percent of the traffic, according to Hitwise.com.

“It is much easier to put the listing information on the sites that have traffic than to convince all of that traffic to come to a single Web site,” said Saul Klein, chief executive officer, Point2 Technologies Inc.