250,000 Real Estate Agents Found New Address at Facebook in 2013, Says N-Play

Jacksonville, FL, December 30, 2013—N-Play, the leading provider of real estate applications on Facebook, reports that 250,000 agents located nationwide have joined its flagship service, the Real Estate Agent Directory ("Directory") for Facebook. Originally launched in the fourth quarter of 2011, the Directory has added 120,000 agents since December 2012, a 90% increase year-over-year. The Directory has become the largest community of agents on any consumer-facing social media platform in the U.S. N-Play estimates one million agents operating in the U.S. have an active Facebook account of which 25% are members of the Directory. At current signup rates of 350 agents per day, the company projects 300,000 members by the end of the second quarter 2014.

"The Directory's swift growth has been fueled by agent migration from traditional websites to social media," said Mark Bloomfield, CEO of N-Play. "Real estate is a people business and social media is where agents find and connect with people. This shift has been accelerated by the high costs and declining ROI of web marketing. Agents are seeking creative ways to reach their audience and social media is the new frontier that delivers positive results," said Bloomfield.

In a recent survey of 2,000 Directory members, 68% of respondents said they focused more of their marketing efforts on Facebook this year. Agent Kristie Scivicque estimates 20% of her business now comes from Facebook, versus 5% in 2012. "Facebook gives me the ability to reach a much broader spectrum of clients than I could through my personal connections or website. With minimal investment I have been able to grow my fan page followers from 347 in July to over 1,600 this month. The vast majority of my new connections were from friends of friends and people outside my traditional network," said Scivicque.

According to Facebook, 128 million daily users (U.S.) log into the site and spend an average of 20 minutes per session...more than any other website. Seventy-three million users are 35-64 years old, a demographic sweet spot for real estate. The average agent in the Directory has 430 friends within this prime demographic, compared to 170 friends for the average Facebook user. This results in a friend-of-friend network of over 70,000 real estate consumers per agent.

"Building pipelines through social media will be important for agents to remain competitive," said Bloomfield. "As more agents leverage this medium, we will see a dramatic change in the way real estate is marketed for the foreseeable future. Everything agents could offer on traditional websites can now be offered on social media. It's like moving your business from a dead-end street to a busy highway. You're going to get more traffic."

The National Association of Realtors' (NAR) establishment of a social media policy for Multiple Listing Services (MLSs) in 2012 set the stage for increased social media use in the real estate community. Internet Data Exchange (IDX), the standard means for displaying real estate listings, permitted MLS participants to display listing information via IDX-compliant solutions on social media. This has opened the door for brokers and agents who want to display listings and offer home search on social media platforms such as Facebook. Since the policy's implementation, over 100 MLS nationwide have approved this use, including eight of the ten largest MLSs in the country.

Hosted on 375 REALTOR® Association Facebook pages, 1,400 broker pages and used by over 250,000 agents located in 14,500 cities, the Directory is the most utilized real estate app on Facebook.

Learn more about the Real Estate Agent Directory at: http://on.fb.me/1dUCidZ