I was in Panera Bread in Northern Virginia this weekend and ran into a Realtor from another Brokerage. We began talking and she asked me if I knew about Facebook. I said of course, it’s one of the big, if not biggest social networking websites on the internet. She then asked if I use the site to advertise my business. I said no and I’ll explain why later. She then proceeded to tell me about her debacle she had with them recently. An email was sent from the Facebook Admin explaining to her that she needed to take down her listings or her account would be suspended. Of course she immediately checked to see if she had violated any of the terms and compared her ads to other real estate listings on Facebook. Apparently, she did nothing to violate the terms and her listings nothing out of the ordinary from the others. It was a back and forth battle with really no concrete reason as to why she needed to take them down. She conceded and removed her listings. They then told her that she could use Facebook Ads which have a price.

I will explain my reasoning of why it’s not a good idea to promote your real estate listings on Facebook. If you didn’t already know, about 1 year ago, Facebook was only accessible to those who had a college email address(.edu). Not until recently did Facebook become public and available to everyone. The target audience was 18-25 year old college coeds who could care less about what home is for sale. Since, applications were created, a news feed came along, and privacy was thrown out the window. The problem with promoting real estate listings is that the majority of the users just don’t care about that kind of stuff. The majority still use Facebook to post pictures up of what happened over the weekend, write comments on each others wall to flirt or say what’s happening on campus or life, and tell others a little about themselves. I don’t see Facebook becoming a place to promote real estate listings or any other business that doesn’t relate to the majority of the users anytime in the near future.

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