Limiting Property Types in Searches

Should You?

At times, there may be valid reasons for limiting certain things visitors can do on your site or certain information available. In general, it seems more customer friendly to let the consumer do what they want.

From another perspective, how many times have you had a buyer say they weren’t thinking of a condo, but they were searching in the IDX and kept noticing how much more affordable they were than single family homes.  Or maybe they were just in better locations.  The thing is that they weren’t searching for condos, but ended up considering them for a home.

Sure, they’re not going to stumble upon a multi-family property and suddenly decide on a four-plex, but the question is whether we want to limit the properties they’re able to see by type in searches.  Some agents only work certain areas that are totally single family homes, so why not limit the searches to single family just to avoid any confusion?

Try This!

The way to address this is to forget “limiting” things and start “adding value.”  Why not offer navigation links to specific property type searches that are “limited” to that type, but not “limiting” for your visitor.  If they only want to consider certain property types, why not speed their search up a bit by giving them a link to a search just on that type.  You can do that with customized links as we wrote about here.

Once you learn how to create customized search links, you can place a navigation link in your top or sidebar to just the types of properties they want to see.  With a link for each major property type, you’ll be “limiting” the properties displayed, but “adding value” for your site visitors.

Using the WordPress Appearance > Menus function, you can create navigation buttons or text links at the top or in your sidebar.  Or, you can use your custom links as text links in articles and posts.  Suppose you write a post about downtown condominiums where all of the city excitement is.  You can place a text link in the post like “Check out available downtown condos here.”  It’s the perfect place for it, as the visitor is there probably due to a search using condos as a keyword.

Think about the ways in which you can add value for your site visitors instead of thinking in terms of limiting something.  They’ll appreciate it.