How Agents Use Real Estate Stealth Websites

An increasing number of real estate agents are utilizing stealth websites to capture the contact information of people starting to gather information online about buying or selling a home. Prospective home sellers go online to look at comparable listings to determine their homes’ value, while buyers search for property they might purchase. The public will often be unwilling to provide contact information on traditional agent websites for fear of being subsequently contacted by an agent. If site visitors don’t feel ready to enter into a relationship with an agent yet, they will leave these sites and search for other websites that don’t require them to engage an agent.

What are Stealth Websites?

Stealth websites also offer the ability to search for homes online in exchange for contact information, but they do not overtly advertise the agent’s services. Instead, stealth websites provide primarily information about homes for sale, which is all that most site visitors want. Although most state real estate regulatory commissions and local associations of Realtors require that an agent’s name and contact information be displayed, agent information is not featured prominently in the general marketing presentation of stealth websites. Real estate stealth websites can be presented and marketed in a number of ways. In the video below, mega agent Jared Cope explains how he has used stealth websites to sell over 200 homes a year for the past 6 years and become a permanent fixture on the Wall Street Journal/Real Trends Top Real Estate Agents list.

Stealth Website Themes

It is important that real estate stealth websites clearly provide what prospective home buyers and sellers want. There are two general ways that agents successfully present their stealth websites. They will often mirror an area’s multiple listing service (MLS) site, or provide a localized version of national property search sites like Zillow or Trulia. Agents can zero in on geographic locations as tightly as desired with addresses like KansasCityHomes.com, PlatteCountyRealEstate.com, MeadowBrookEstates.com or even GreaterKansasCityMLS.com. Whether it be by region, city, county or neighborhood, the public searches for homes by location. So stealth websites should clearly and singularly provide visitors with the ability to locate listings in specific areas and not enlisting the services of a real estate agent.