If the real estate industry is moving slowly to embrace technology, ambitious new college graduates are not, if Philadelphia-based Banner Networks is any example.
Founded by five 1996 University of Pennsylvania graduates a few months ago, the telecommunications company has sold the property managers of seven luxury apartment buildings on outfitting their buildings with high-speed data-transmission lines and satellite TV capabilities.
Banner offers advanced telephone services for home office set-ups as well, says youthful company President Chris Robbins, a computer science and history student at Penn.
Robbins and his colleagues, some business students, designed their business plan after enjoying such services in their dormitories at Penn, Robbins said. So far, the company–which is in business with Fujitsu, a telecommunications equipment firm, and IBM–has signed up a building a month, with what he said a unique formula that allows property owners and managers to make money off the amenities.
It costs about $27,000 to retrofit 100 units, said Robbins, whose competitors include such telecommunications heavyweights as MCI. Most property managers are charging from $28 to $42 a month for the added services.
Recently, Banner opened a fully outfitted model apartment in one of its client buildings, One Rittenhouse Square, operated by Rittenhouse Management Corp. The purpose was to give other Philadelphia property owners and managers of multifamily housing a chance to “kick the tires” of Banner’s system, Robbins said.
The showroom is open by appointment only Monday through Friday.
Realtor resources
Realtor.com is spreading its wings beyond its initial home listings focus to include comprehensive information on mortgage rates from New Jersey-based BanxQuote, which operates a network of co-branded banking centers on the Internet.
Co-branded with Realtor.com, the BanxQuote network offers updated deposit and loan rates, online banking and trading, global electronic commerce and other financial market data.
The mortgage information on the Realtor site includes:
– Home finance: Rates for first mortgages as well as home equity loans or lines of credit.
– Consumer finance: Comparative rates for credit cards, boat & RV loans, personal loans and student loans.
– Money & investments: Money rates and economic indicators, activities of the Federal Reserve and information about the markets for bonds, stocks and commodities.
– Resource library: Information on mortgage finance, saving and investing, retirement planning, insurance and consumer fraud.
Demographic details
The recently launched American Real Estate Exchange has updated its market demographic data, filling out its mix to include 1997 estimates and 2002 projections, according to the Bethesda, Md.-based firm.
The estimates based on U.S. Bureau of the Census statistics for more than 100 state and metropolitan areas were calculated by Claritas Inc., a geo-demographic information firm. The AMREX site now includes online comparative statistics for income trends, income/wealth/home value distribution, age, race, gender, housing units (rental and owned), education, employment by occupation and industry, labor force numbers and transportation data for the years 1980, 1990, 1997 and 2002.
AMREX, at www.amrex.com, was launched earlier this year as an online source for due-diligence information commonly sought by real estate investors. In addition to demographic data, the site contains real estate and environmental news, which is organized by subject and location, and a directory of real estate investment trusts and publicly traded companies heavily involved in real estate.
For basic access to the AMREX site, visitors can register for free. For fuller use of the site, subscriptions are available on a sliding scale.
Sales sense
What’s the best way to sell something to someone? Speak their language. So when former mortgage loan officer James Picquet, now head of his own Web page design firm, went to market his services to real estate agents, what he decided to sell was selling.
Picquet has parceled out a segment of his company’s Internet site for real estate agents to pick up a hefty dose of tips on salesmanship in the Internet Age–and learn about Web site design in the process.
With at least some of the material drawn from nationally known sales consultants, Picquet’s Real Estate Weekly presents updated ideas for time management, recipes for presentation success, 103 marketing ideas, sales scripts and strategies for handling clients and growing a business.
The site also contains an online bulletin board for agents and a winnowed list of useful links to other real estate areas on the Web. (Picquet plans to categorize and rate the sites in the future.)
With the whole package, Picquet gives computer-shy agents a good excuse to check out the Internet world. Real Estate Weekly is cleanly designed and content-focused, an easy sell for today’s information-hungry consumer.
