The Gold Rush of 1849 delivered more riches to the people who sold picks and shovels to the prospectors than it did to the miners themselves. Still, many of them settled in California even though they didn’t get rich.
For RE/MAX real estate executive Bruce Benham, the aftermath of the gold rush is a lot like the current state of the Internet. With only 15 percent of the population Internet-enabled, real estate agents aren’t getting rich from their Web sites.
Though the riches are likely to flow more freely by 2000, he said, “the Web is not yet a mainstream tool.”
Speaking at a recent San Francisco real estate conference, he predicted that though Web real estate customers are likely to become increasingly better informed, they will still rely on real estate agents to help them with the transaction. He said mortgage loan agents are more likely to be supplanted by Internet lenders who deal directly with borrowers.
Picking up that theme, Ned Hoyt, president of the new HomeShark Web site that counsels consumers on the real estate and mortgage loan process, said that as the Internet acts to lower real estate transaction fees, “the first person to go is the mortgage broker.”
HomeShark offers to process mortgage loans for 3/8ths of a percentage point instead of the full point usually charged. He said the predicted 10 percent shift of real estate business to the Internet over the next five years “will put marginal players out of business” and steer mortgage brokers toward offering their services to credit-impaired buyers who need an outside professional to find them a loan.
Scott Kersnar
Best faces forward
A new marketing approach for two Manhattan office buildings gives new meaning to the term “Internet address.”
The virtues of two buildings being leased by Williamson, Picket, Gross are being touted on Web sites that are their actual street addresses.
The Internet addresses for two buildings, located at 317 Madison Ave. and 51 E. 42nd St., are www.317madisonave.com and www.51e42ndst.com. On both sites, Williamson, Picket, Gross wastes no time putting the buildings’ best face forward.
The home pages feature photographs of the buildings against stylishly designed backgrounds. Visitors can learn about the building’s history, its tenants, the leasing company’s background, a locator map showing the building’s proximity to subway lines, and what’s currently available.
In the availability section, visitors can scroll through individual office spaces, floor plans, zooming in as close as individual rooms. Prices per square foot are also listed.
The site has been in operation for three months and the company plans to add a newsletter and tenant questionnaire this summer, said Robert Leitner of Williamson, Picket, Gross.
“We had limited success with our print advertising and were looking for a new method of reaching the business community at large,” Leitner said. “Creating our own Web site seemed to be an easy, relatively inexpensive way of advertising our properties 24 hours a day. Using the building address as the domain name just seemed like the logical choice.”
And it is likely to be logical choice for others as well, says Peter Pike, the proprietor of PikeNet, an online commercial property information site.
“Street addresses and property names are coming to the Web,” Pike said. “Just like 1-800 numbers get converted into easily remembered words, major properties will try to get URLs (Web site addresses) that are short and catchy. Then they’ll plaster these URLs across their marketing materials. It’s a terrific way of building brand identity.”
Liz Poppens
Online listings expand
As of August, online property listings from Moore Data Management Service’s CyberHomes service will be added to the national online classifieds package provided by Yahoo!, one of the Web’s leading navigation services, the two companies announced.
With the agreement signed, all that remains is for Minneapolis-based Moore to line up its 40 multiple listing service (MLS) partners who provide the more than 350,000 listings carried on CyberHomes, which opened in February 1996, said Howard Latham, Moore’s vice president for marketing.
“We’ve had a positive reaction so far,” Latham said. “Yahoo! has made a name for itself as really being able to drive traffic.”
In addition to Yahoo! Classifieds main site, Cyberhomes listings also will be available through Yahoo!’s 10 metro sites (Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle and Washington, D.C.,). CyberHomes also will feature a hyperlink to Santa Clara, Calif.-based Yahoo!
Latham said his company believes the Yahoo! connection will bring more multiple listing services into its fold, Latham said. “We’ve had a lot of activity with MLSs lately who want to work with us,” he said. “We’re continuing to build our listings.”
CyberHomes, which combines nightly updates with fully integrated mapping, currently receives 500,000 hits per day, according to the company.
Yahoo! Classifieds is a free advertising service for jobs, cars, rentals, computers, pets, personals and miscellaneous merchandise.
“Our goal when creating Yahoo! Classifieds was to offer our community of users an easy way to connect with one another on a local and national level,” said Ellen Siminoff, director of communities at Yahoo!
“Yahoo! Classifieds combines individual submissions with content from leading industry players like CyberHomes to create an up-to-date, comprehensive resource for users to find what they need.”
Teaming up
The nation’s largest provider of online real estate listings is teaming up with one of the nation’s largest online classified ad services. Classifieds2000, a two-year-old company based in Santa Clara, Calif., said it will distribute Realtor.com’s 800,000-plus listings through the Classifieds2000 network.
The classified advertising company signed a strategic partnership agreement with RealSelect, which operates Realtor.com. The National Association of Realtors has a minority ownership in the Web site, which is expected to grow this summer to more than 1 million listings from participating realty boards and multiple listing services.
Classifieds2000 provides classified advertising content to 80 major Web sites; its network affiliates include four major search enginees–Excite, Infoseek, Lycos and Webcrawler–and five major Internet service providers–AT&T, Netcom, Earthlink, Mindspring and Concentric Networks.
“Now, through the expanded distribution of the Classifieds2000 Network, even more online consumers interested in buying a home will have easy access to Realtor.com’s comprehensive listings in communities nationwide, plus advanced search capability to locate homes with precisely the features, and the price tag, they want,” said Sani El-Fishawy, president of Classifieds2000.
The company’s real estate advertising currently is limited to apartment and house rentals, vacation homes and time-shares. In addition to rental property, Classifieds2000 posts online advertising for computers, cars, general merchandise, jobs and personals. Its Web site generates 6 million searches per month, according to the company.
RealSelect in the last year has signed partnership agreements with USA Today, America Online and NBC.
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Chicago Tribune Homes
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