3 Benefits of Having a Mobile-friendly Website

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It is almost impossible to walk down a busy city street without seeing at least a few people staring down at their cellphones. We are living in a digital age where people are dependent on their mobile devices. When designing a website, it is important to remember that a large percentage of website viewers are also mobile web users. If you haven’t already, now it is the time to upgrade to a mobile-friendly website. Continue reading and discover a few significant benefits of having a mobile-friendly website.

Quicker download speed

There are very few things in the world that are more frustrating than waiting for a website to load. Mobile websites are designed with optimal download speed so users can browse faster without having to wait long for pages to load. There is a high likelihood that a user will exit close out of your real estate website if your pages are taking too long to load.

Positive user experience

Many older websites are not designed for mobile devices. In other words, they are not formatting to look nice on a smartphone. This often reflects poorly on the business and hurts the user experience. The more user-friendly your website is, the more likely people are to return to it. If you haven’t already, optimize your website to be compatible with all mobile devices. You will be glad that you did.

Enhanced SEO performance

If you want your website to rank high on search engines like Google and Yahoo, you need to ensure it is mobile friendly. One of the best ways to enhance the SEO of your website is to make it mobile-friendly. In a highly competitive industry like real estate, you want to be sure that you are not putting yourself at a disadvantage by having a website that does not rank well on search engines.

HUD Foreclosures

HUD foreclosures and VA Foreclosures are some of the best homes to buy when price is part of the equation. As with most Americans, price is always a concern. If not buying the same house for less, why not buy more house for the same dollar invested? When looking for a good deal it is hard to do better than the VA or HUD foreclosures market. The simple truth is that there are just more VA and HUD homes on the market, as they represent such a large number of mortgages that are generated each year. This translates into more foreclosures just by the magnitude of difference between all others comparing to the two largest.

The two largest also being government owned and operated means that they have less time to wait to make money back on the home. The FHA is especially known for selling HUD homes for less than the average sales price in a given area. FHA foreclosures represent a fraction of HUD but they are still a significant number of homes and both should be considered.

VA (Veterans Administration) and HUD (Housing and Urban Development) have different and unique opportunities for the buyer. Both are often forgiven for the local taxes normally associated with the purchase of a home (this is on a county by county basis). Be sure to ask the local title company or escrow company to look into it for you before closing as this is often missed due to their are not used to dealing with the 2 to 3 percent of the market that VA and HUD foreclosures represent.

Foreclosure Listings Increasing

As the market settled after the mortgage meltdown foreclosure listings also settled and fewer homes were on the market with a placard reading “Bank Foreclosure” in big red lettering. This was a good thing for the entire real estate market. Having an abundance of foreclosures brings the entire market down and it makes it harder for home owners, who would like to move, to get the appropriate price for their home as a similar home down the same street was sold for substantially less and the appraiser is using the foreclosure as a comparable sale.

This is just one of the problems when there are too many foreclosure listings in any area. Another issue is the television set that sits in everyone’s living room harping about the price of homes based on the number of foreclosures and this constant barrage of negative information makes most people sit on the sidelines waiting for the market to either implode completely or to correct itself. Meanwhile while they wait, others are buying foreclosure listings and making great investments.

Whatever the reason, a market can only handle so many foreclosure listings at any given time. The more foreclosures, the lower the market gets and this is a lesson the banks that were foreclosing and selling off realized too late. The market and their investments would have been better off if there had not been a rush to divest themselves of the toxic assets made more toxic by their own actions.