iHOUSE Website Customer Close-Up
Nanci Buczynski and her husband moved around a lot. Moving 13 times meant Nanci was at the buying and selling end of plenty of real estate transactions, and she wasn’t even a real estate agent at the time! When Nanci and her husband ‘retired’ to Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, Nanci wasn’t content without something to do. She got a job with a local REALTOR®, assisting him with marketing duties such as creating virtual tours and adding pictures to his website. However, once she got her feet wet in real estate, she wanted more.
Nanci has now been a Hilton Head Island real estate agent for about 10 years. The island boasts a variety of real estate, including residential communities, villas, condos, and vacation homes. Hilton Head is about 12 miles long by 4 miles wide and is widely known as a resort community. The island’s population of about 35,000 inhabitants primarily works to support the tourism and real estate industries. Nanci says, “We have about 2.5 million visitors a year, for an island that has only 35,000 inhabitants we service a lot of people.”
Because so many of the buyers that visit Hilton Head are also on vacation, shopping for real estate is not always their first priority. Visiting properties and doing paperwork often needs to be squeezed in between the many recreational activities Hilton Head has to offer, such as golf, kayaking, and parasailing. Needless to say, this makes Nanci’s job a little difficult sometimes. “We have to do a lot of work beforehand to identify and isolate the properties that will fit their needs and that is done on the Internet.” Nanci prides herself in being an information source at all points of the transaction process, sitting at 2 computers to keep people informed of market trends, mortgage rates, and the local community. “I would say maybe more than 70% of my business is in email”, says Nanci, though “it’s difficult to do some of these things via email because it’s emotional for the buyer, and sometimes for me too. That’s difficult to put into email so that’s when the telephone comes in handy.”
Nanci’s non-traditional obstacles in dealing with buyers in her area led her to create Hilton Head 101. The brief amount of time that she has to work with her buyers and sellers stressed the importance that her clients come to her well informed and ready to move forward with the process. As a former high school Biology and Art teacher, it seemed natural that she create an informative online course on the history of Hilton Head, the different communities on the island, local government, real estate terms and processes, and much more. The course can be found on her website and is linked to many local websites, including her company’s and several other local REALTORS®. Hilton Head 101 is a complete resource, including an extensive list of links to local government websites, real estate resources, mortgage lenders, and much more. And any student knows a course wouldn’t be complete without quizzes! Nanci says, “They can take it (the course) online and then when they come to see me they’re ready to go. So it’s a help for them but a big help for me too.”
Nanci has put a lot of time into her iHOUSE website, www.miznanci.com, to make it a great resource for anything Hilton Head. When asked about how iHOUSE compares to her previous website experiences, Nanci replied, “It (her previous website) was not user-friendly. Everything had to be sent to a manager and the manager, in their own time, would apply it to the site. I found it very cumbersome. I looked at quite a few before I chose iHOUSE and it seems to fit my style and it’s very easy for me. I like it!” She remembers that when she first started with iHOUSE she was particularly taken with the colorful and adaptable templates. After having her site for four years and creating Hilton Head 101, Nanci’s favorite feature of her iHOUSE site is the Site Map, where she can easily make edits, redirect pages, upload files to the File Manager, and much more. “I’ve also been very, very happy with the online help as well as of course the phone contact. I’ve never been disappointed in getting help when I needed it.”
Nanci is confident that despite the dark cloud over the real estate industry in general, the Hilton Head market will continue to be strong. Because Hilton Head is an island resort, there is limited supply and high demand, which helps make the island’s local real estate market more resilient to broader market trends. When asked about her market, Nanci commented, “Many of our buyers recognize that the prices are a little bit down from where they used to be so they want to sell their properties in order to buy more, unlike in other areas of the country where people want to sell their properties so they can come here.” To ensure that Nanci is serving her clients to the best of her ability, she recently completed an Accredited Buyers’ Representation course and she says, “As soon as the last paperwork is done, I will be adding that to my website as well.”
