I was just looking at a new construction new listing priced at $999,999.

The agent clearly was unaware that buyers in the $1M and over price range won't see the listing when doing a search based on price.

This sort of cutesy pricing makes sense for the blue-light specials at KMart, but it's terribly stupid in real estate. Round it up to a million bucks and you reach everyone searching from $750 to $1M and everyone searching from $1M and up.

Pretty randomly and impulsively, if you believe the results of the 2005 National Association of Realtors Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers.

Some of the survey data is reported and discussed in a good article by Bob Hunt at Realty Times.

Some key numbers: 64 percent of the buyers who used an agent and 74 percent of the sellers who used an agent interviewed only one agent. The most important factor in choosing a seller's agent was reputation. Among buyers, 92 percent ranked product and market knowledge as important.

Our take-away: use the Internet to develop a reputation by show-casing your product and market knowledge. Write about the market and the homes that are available rather than simply declaring that you're an expert.

I trekked out to the nether boonies yesterday to meet with two completely clueless folks at an ad agency that touts its Web expertise.

Every attempt on my part to talk about and show off the trends and technologies that are reshaping real estate marketing on the Web was met with blank stares, total indifference. and a complete lack of curiosity. I was talking to zombies, as I often find myself doing.

The day ended on a much more positive note, in a meeting with Bob Darrow, who's writing for YoChicago's West Lakeview / Roscoe Village journal.

Bob already has an impressive mastery of a wide set of Web tools. He's developed his skills despite the fact that, by his report, his sellers don't yet attach much value to them, in anticipation of the day when his skills will become the norm. He stopped in to see us to see whether we could help him improve the ways he's using our Wibiti and YoChicago journal Web-based marketing tools.

There's a strong irony in the fact that the ad agencies and media professionals who are supposed to be the leaders in real estate marketing lag well behind the real estate agents they should be leading.

Here's a novel twist. Lisa Maysonet, a New York broker with Prudential Douglas Elliman, is posting open houses hosted by FSBOs (for sale by owners) on her blog each week.

Seems like a great way to get both buyers and owners paying attention to Lisa's blog - and developing a relationship with Lisa.

Bob Darrow, a real estate agent who writes for the West Lakeview & Roscoe Village journal, was in our offices for a seminar the other day and asked whether it's OK to post information about his listings on the journal.

My answer was "yes" and "no," and we explored that a little before we both had to go off to other agendas.

From the looks of his latest posts, Bob's answering his own question pretty well, on his own. Instead of simply talking about his listings (I'm not sure they're all his), he's talking about real estate development in his neighborhood, and what's different and interesting about some of it, and about the fabric of the city.

I've been creating sample News release Home Pages for our new endeavor, HousingNewswire.com, for a week or two now. It takes a fair amount of work, which I mentioned in my last post, but the results are well worth it.

By far the most time-consuming aspect of the job isn't done on the Home Page at all - it's the search for relevant sites to provide links to. And I think this may be the most important piece of the puzzle, at least in terms of building and maintaining readership. Searching for links requires time, patience and creativity - with the prerequisite that the creative, patient person with time on their hands understands how the Internet and search engines work.

It's difficult to teach people how to actively and creatively search the web for information their audience will be interested in. I'm starting to organize a workshop for my current clients - an informal, hands-on discussion of best practices and technical issues - and I expect this to be the most challenging part of the day.

Here’s a common buyer / renter scenario.

You’re thinking about buying or renting a new home. You drive past a highrise or a housing complex that looks attractive, and you want to know more about it.

Where do you start? You could stop, and inquire, but that’s often a waste of time. You could call your real estate agent, if you have one – but that’s also often a waste of time (or worse).

Wouldn’t it be great if you could go online and find one or more Web pages profiling the property just by scanning property profiles for the ZIP code in which it’s located? If a number of profiles have been posted by different real estate professionals for the property you’re interested in, you’d also get a sense of who’s an expert about the property and who might not be. The right kind of system would also enable you to communicate anonymously with the real estate professionals until you develop a comfort level with one or more of them.

Well, that’s one of the scenarios that the Housing profiles category of HomePagesUSA is designed to accommodate.

In an earlier post we suggested the need for an overview of a group of similar properties. And, we noted, creating profiles of the individual properties would be the place for a real estate professional to start putting such an overview together.

We’ve just created a Web page with HomePagesUSA to post some suggested best practices for real estate professionals who want to create Housing profiles. You can see that best practices Web page here.

Add your comments and suggestions here, and we’ll incorporate the best ones in our best practices.