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Leonard Ryden Burr Real Estate is offering text-message info on listed properties

By Cindy Hodnett
HomePlace Writer

It's Sunday afternoon, and you're driving around neighborhoods, searching for your next dream home. You have several possibilities written down, but you need more information. How much is the home? How many bedrooms does it have? What's the square footage? As the houses start to meld together in your mind, you find yourself wishing that you could access the basic information about each house as you're driving by. After all, if one of the properties is in your price range, it would be great to have that information while you're checking out the surrounding neighborhood.

Thanks to an innovative new program offered by Leonard Ryden Burr Real Estate in partnership with the Winston-Salem Journal, potential buyers can now obtain basic information about LRB listings by using their cell phones. When individuals see a LRB property they like, they simply type in the text-message code listed with the "For Sale" sign in front of the home, and they can immediately pull up the listing's price, address, square footage, number of bedrooms and baths, and agent contact information.

"Text messaging is a wave of the future for real estate, and Leonard Ryden Burr wanted to lead the way among local real-estate firms," said LRB partner Greg White. "With the simple use of cell-phone texting, homebuyers get more information about properties on their own terms than ever before."

"It doesn't take any kind of special cell phone for text messaging," White said. "Most cell phones produced in the past few years have text messaging capability. It's really quick and easy."

Statistics obtained from Verizon Wireless report that its subscribers sent and received about 10 billion text messages in June 2007. Nearly 70 percent of all mobile-phone subscribers in the U.S. actively use text messaging, and cell-phone users of all ages are jumping on the texting bandwagon.

According to White, people inquiring about a home can send a quick text message like "LRB 25 to 82672" using their cell phone. Within minutes, they will receive a response that includes the property information as well as a Web link that buyers can click on for a complete property description and multiple photos. More than 40 Leonard Ryden Burr listings are already part of the text-messaging program.

"As a company, Leonard Ryden Burr supports the ongoing education of its agents in the use of the latest technologies," said Ginger Baldwin, a sales associate at LRB. "National statistics indicate that homebuyers demand information almost immediately after an inquiry, and we believe that text messaging, along with other new technologies we offer, will greatly benefit buyers and sellers. My clients love it."

In addition to text messaging, Leonard Ryden Burr offers home listings on LuxuryRealEstate.com, Google Base, and daily updated listings on Trulia and the RELO Home Search. Leonard Ryden Burr is also part of the "Company Showcase" program offered by Realtor.com, and White said that the Web site includes more property photos and a longer property description for listings.

"Realtor.com is the No. 1 way that people moving into a city like Winston-Salem search for their new home," he said. "Having your property listed in Realtor.com basically means that it's available at the highest level of search engines, which is a huge benefit for sellers."

Along with the Web sources and the text-messaging partnership with the Winston-Salem Journal, Leonard Ryden Burr features individual listings every Thursday and Friday on journalnow.com. Ads of the featured homes are displayed on every page of journalnow.com.

"Although the journalnow.com online ad program is very new, it's already a huge success," White said. "We're getting 50 to 150 direct click-throughs per day from journalnow.com to LRBRealEstate.com."

For more information on Leonard Ryden Burr Real Estate, call 336-779-9200 or go to www.lrbrealestate.com.