Real Estate Marketing & Beyond
Century 21 Real Estate LLC recently launched a new website that is global, and available in no less than 16 different languages. The website provides consumers with information about listings around the world from Century 21 agents and offices.
The site contains around half a million listings and will convert prices into 36 different currencies. Units of measurement can differ from country to country, so users have the choice of viewing them in either metric or standard, while viewers in Asia can use the local unit of measurement, which according to the article in Inman News, is called a ping. Users are able to select their language from a menu at the top of the page while there is a clickable menu to choose the relevant currency underneath the listings price.
The parent company of Century 21, Realogy, signed a contract with Immobel, a real estate hosting service that provides listings translations to develop the site. The site was paid for through investment from Century 21 international master franchise owners. It's expected it will significantly increase the global presence of the company.
At the moment Century 21 has approximately 102,000 agents in 7,100 offices located throughout the world. Interestingly the company has far more offices outside the US. Nearly half of all transactions last year took place outside the United States.
There are 74 master franchise regions. At the moment only some are contributing listings towards the site, but it's expected this number will increase as it becomes more established. The president and CEO of Century 21, Rick Davidson, believes this is a good time to launch a new global site, especially as he feels international buyers will become increasingly important to the US market as it gradually recovers. The site is a little different from other global real estate websites as all searches are conducted in just one site as opposed to users being directed towards regional sites.
Century 21 already has stiff competition as RE/MAX LLC launched its own global website a couple of years ago. This covers listings in 85 countries and information is translated into 36 languages. Realogy also owns Coldwell Banker Real Estate. This company has its own global site but doesn't offer a language translation facility. Instead users are directed to websites maintained by master franchise region owners who operate in 50 countries throughout the world.
