Aladdin Realtor’s Site Earns 4.5 Mice

Aladdin Realtors has used its Web site to pull a Huck Finn on the rest of Northwest Arkansas’ real estate companies.

It’s site, www.aladdinrealtors.com, is the only local site that’s integrated directly into the national multiple listing service, so it’s updated real time by Realtors around the world. That means Aladdin is the first firm in the market to figure out how to get its competitors to do part of its work fast and for free.

The function was made legal last fall when the National Board of Realtors passed a reciprocity bill that allowed Realtors to post their colleagues’ listings without written permission.

All Realtors, of course, have access to the MLS. But Aladdin’s innovative approach was to have its own site be fed by the online listing book so that when other firms list or sell a house the Aladdin site is updated instantly. The six-figure result is a name-brand Internet presence that offers potential home buyers a local, vertically integrated site, or vortal.

Our team of reviewers found this site to be clean, comprehensive and cutting edge.

The home page itself is a little busier than we prefer. We like sites that launch to a simpler, corporate look. But there’s no denying that Aladdin Realtors got its money’s worth from site designer and administrator Net Design Computer Center Inc. of Springdale.

NDCC debuted the site in grand fashion last August at the Northwest Arkansas Business Expo in Springdale. NDCC said it’s done very little marketing for Aladdin’s site, but it still gets about 60,000 hits per month. That number is expected to spike to about 100,000 hits following a complete marketing campaign that’s in the works.

Included in the campaign will be the sale of banner advertising, and Aladdin is seeking a local bank to underwrite its mortgage calculator. NDCC will set the calculator up so that applications to prequalify for loans can be sent directly to the bank from the site.

One technician said the site contained “good, resourceful information.” He added that the company used some “good forward thinking” to require e-mail registration, since that would enable it to use the data for additional marketing efforts.

Prospective Aladdin clients can already use the site’s search engine to narrow their choices down to a handful of homes. And Realtors are already downloading their clients’ prospects to a Palm Pilot format so that it’s functional for touring purposes.