Hi Everyone,

Nowadays it is a common knowledge that 90% or more of real estate buyers first of all search internet to find properties. That's why it's a must for your property to be represented on the internet. As Russians search internet in Russian, your property must be represented in RuNet, the Russian internet, if you are looking for Russian buyers. It can be your own website in Russian, Russian real estate agents websites, advertising on Russian real estate portals or all of the above.

I've tried to find some reliable stats on how many times should be an international property listing / webpage in Russian internet viewed to be sold eventually. Of course it can be on average only; properties and countries are different and the supply / demand ratio for them in Russia also varies, but more on that later.

Forbes states that concerning real estate websites usually 2% to 4% of all viewers would send an inquiry about a particular property (would convert into leads in other words). The rest of the viewers are just curious or collecting some preliminary information, and are not really potential buyers for this property in the short run (but could become in the long run).

The number is in full compliance with general stats that effectiveness of any internet promotion is 1% to 2% on average (whether you do an emailing blast or just count the ratio of interested inquirers to all visitors of a website).

So, to receive one potential buyer interested in your property (a lead) you have to have 25 viewers of its internet listing at least (if we take the best of Forbes' evaluation of 4%) or 50 (if only 2% of all viewers would become interested). That was easy.

Now, here is a more difficult question: how many inquiries about your particular property should you receive to get it sold eventually (or how many leads it takes to sell a property)? Not much statistics on that... (By the way if you have your own data or saw some reports on this, please share with me!) So far, I was able to find a report from Global Edge that states the following: international real estate agents receive 61 inquiries on average to sell a property eventually. We'll stick with this number for our purpose.

So, to sell a property you need on average:

25 or 50 viewers of the property on the internet to convert into 1 lead and multiplied by 61 leads required to make a sale = (in round numbers) from 1,500 to 3,000 visitors should look at the property’ listing!

Once again – some properties in some countries will require more than that and some other properties that are in high demand by Russian buyers will require less than that.

You have to attract 1,500 to 3,000 viewers to your property's Russian internet presentation in some reasonable time to make a sale. If your goal is to sell in 3 months, let's divide the total number required by 3 and we'll have from 500 to 1000 viewers a month that you need to sell this property. If your goal is to sell in 6 months, you need from 250 to 500 viewers of your property each month.

So, what does it mean to have from 250 to 1000 viewers of your property's Russian internet presentation a month? (And again and again – some properties in some countries will require more than that and some other properties that are in high demand by Russian buyers will require less than that to be sold!)

Here's the good news: these numbers are quite doable if you choose the right route to represent your property in Russian internet.

If you go through realtors in Russia, get involved with those who have high traffic to their websites and thus would showcase your property to many potential buyers.

If you list your property with Russian real estate portals, choose those that have high traffic of visitors searching for your country and type of property.

If you have your own property website in Russian internet, promote it higher in Russian search engines by all means available (pay-per-click advertising, getting links from appropriate third parties topical websites, etc.)

Next time we'll talk about how your property for sale presentation should stand up in the eyes of potential buyers against other properties.

To your best business success,

Sincerely,