Everyone knows the real estate market is going through tough times now, but that doesn't mean there aren't deals to be found. If you're in the market for a home, some of our clients have recently launched sites that can help you find the perfect fit for your family or business. If you're a Realtor, we can help you create an experience to get potential buyers in the right place. If you're a web designer with clients that are Realtors, we can provide the ideal platform to integrate with the real estate services they already use.

Venture Homes, The Generations Group Realtors, and RE/MAX Real Estate Centre are three companies located in Iowa that have recently launched Markup Factory sites that directly integrate with their MLS (Multiple Listing Service) systems to let potential buyers search, learn, and communicate about the properties they have for sale.

Markup Factory has the capability to integrate with different MLS systems. This not a feature available with any of the standard packages, but (very reasonable) pricing can be discussed by contacting us.

There are a few companies out there that act as real estate website factories, churning out hundreds of sites with sub-standard design and usability. Most of their clients go on blissfully unaware that what they bought is probably not search engine friendly and certainly does not meet the expectations of today's web-savvy audience. We take a different approach: Build a great, easy to manage website, and integrate the real estate features into that framework. The sites mentioned above were designed by our in-house design team, but if you're a designer or a Realtor with your own designer, it's easy to make something just as good or better. In the end you'll end up spending less money for more quality. In this market, you can't afford to leave your customers with a bad taste in their mouth.

These sites (we're launching more soon) download the listing data daily and automatically update the site content. You don't need to do anything once it's set up (unless you want to, of course.) We currently have sites set up in the central Iowa and eastern Iowa areas, but we can work with your broker and MLS provider to set up a site anywhere in the US. We've been building sites for Realtors for over 10 years here, too, so we speak RETS, IDX, FTP, GLA and all of the alphabet soup that goes along with the business.

If you've visited the above sites and have any comments, we would love to hear them. If you're in the market for a website, with or without real estate features, sign up or drop us a note. We can't wait to work with you to bring your customers a top-of-the-line web experience.