Real Estate Websites are often trying to do 2 different things. First you are promoting your listings to prospective buyers, second you are promoting yourself to prospective new clients. So your website needs to complete both these tasks so you should consider these points when coming up with with a domain name.
To find the best domain to promote your Real Estate Listings:
Example Domains that are great for promoting your listings would be “Location-PropertyType-BuyerType” , so for example if you put GuelphBungalowRetirees.com and if someone is looking for Bungalows for sale in Guelph for retiring couple, your domain has hit all three points. Another example would be LondonCondosFirstTimeBuyer.com if you specialized in these types of properties/buyers. Also at the end of your career and your domain is pulling in a steady stream of traffic, you can sell the domain where as your personal name alone would not be sellable as much.
To find the best domain to promote your self as a Real Estate Agent:
Examples of domains that help promote you as a prospective agent could be “Name-ExperiencedAgent.com or “Name-TrustedPartner.com..This tells the reader the characteristics that you promote yourself as and why people have referred you in the past. Having testimonials that make this point also helps bring home the point.
You can have multiple domain names pointing to your site, but your site can only have 1 primary domain (or should only have 1 primary domain). That means that no matter which domain you put into the URL, they all convert to the primary domain. Google does not like and can penalize (by not ranking you or with low rankings) if you have multiple domain names each pulling up the same site as that causes duplicate content in Search Engines and Google wants their results to be free of redundancy. The primary domain will be the domain that gets indexed with Google and only the primary domain.
I would suggest both but let me explain why.
Have one that promotes you as an agent, this can be put on your business cards and on your Real Estate billboards to promote yourself and what you offer. It gives the person some instant information about you for example if it is “Your NAME-HARDWORKING.com, the reader already knows a bit about you before even getting to your site. Your website should of course have an ABOUT ME page that goes into detail about what you bring to the table and examples to back it up (pictures help too!), and a testimonials section that backs up your claims as nothing beats third party reviews!
Also having a domain name that promotes your listings. When people search online for a home or property they type in the location and home types and specifics that they are looking for to purchase or specific information about the situation they are in for example small home for first time buyer.. etc, so you want your domain name to hit all these points. By doing this you also attract a more targeted market, no point attracting people looking for downtown small condos when you are selling large detached homes in a swanky neighbourhood.
If you compare the people googling for properties for sale and the people googling for prospective agents, I would say you will have far more people online looking for properties as I think most people find a real estate agent by asking friends, family, neighbours and colleagues. Another reason to keep in touch with all your past clients! So having said that, I would have the domain that promotes your listings as your primary domain name (the one that will be indexed in Google) and the one that promotes yourself feed into it.
Don’t be discouraged if the domain you first thought of is already taken, people have been snatching these up for the past two decades. But there are infinite possibilities and arrangement of words. Try looking at the words in different orders, try a different extension, .com, .net, .ca etc and try Synonyms for example, instead of to buy, you can try words like Bargain, Deals, Acquire, Negotiate, Offer, Bid, Possession, Secure, take hold of..etc.
Hope this information gives you some food for thought when deciding what domain name to use.