One thing about looking for real estate on the west Florida coast–tooling up and down the coast from St. Petersburg to Port Charlotte during the hot months of summer can wilt the enthusiasm of the most intrepid home buyer.
So leave it to the biggest real estate agency in the home town of Ringling Bros. Barnum and Bailey Circus to come up with a solution with more bells and whistles than a car full of clowns.
Michael Saunders, a 20-year veteran of Florida real estate, opened a 6,000-square-foot facility dubbed the Michael Saunders Real Estate Gallery in downtown Sarasota last November, and according to one marketing staffer, the agency is on its way to posting its best year ever this year: about $400 million in sales.
“I’d say about 10 percent of the increase is due to the gallery,” said the agency’s Ray Porter.
No more do Saunders’ customers have to resort to a car to sweat their searches for homes to buy or rent. The tony gallery is loaded with plush furniture, 60-inch television screens, back-lit kiosks promoting new-home developments and rental and resort properties, tastefully appointed conference rooms and a computer browsing station right next to the cappuccino machine and the juice bar.
For now, users of the computer station only have access to the 850 listings on Saunders’ Internet site, which range in price from simple $80,000 homes to million-dollar estates. Eventually, Porter said, the station will connect with new-home developments in the area.
But elsewhere in the gallery, visitors are exposed to the latest technology for showing homes on video and CD-ROM in addition to linking up with area demographics, school data and information on community services and attractions. All this armchair touring is aided by a plethora of Saunders agents on hand to guide visitors through the gallery.
At least one incentive for Saunders’ move to concentrate marketing in her glitzy one-stop shop: 30 percent of the guests staying at local rental properties, many managed by the agency, eventually buy homes in the area.
Million for one
What does it take to get a million home listings onto the World Wide Web? Two years and millions of dollars. Just ask RealSelect, which operates Realtor.com.
The leading online real estate site announced it has landed its one millionth home listing on the Web.
Stuart Wolff, chairman and CEO of RealSelect, is bold in his description of his firm’s accomplishments: “Reaching the one millionth listing mark further elevates our position as the undisputed market leader in the online real estate space, and Realtors and consumers alike can reap the benefits of having access to this national resource of homes for sale on the Internet.”
With approximately 1.2 million homes for sale in the U.S. at any given time, Realtor.com has more than 80 percent of that market online in a national database.
Realtor.com works with several distribution partners including NBC, USA Today, AOL’s Digital Cities, and Classifieds2000. Realtor.com has an exclusive, lifetime partnership with the National Association of Realtors as the organization’s official Web site.
Realtor.com’s database is organized by state, city and neighborhood, with a search engine that uses more than 80 home search qualifiers (location, price, lot size, square footage, number of bedrooms, etc.).
Paperwork reduction
No one is more overwhelmed by paperwork in the home loan transaction than the average home buyer. One reason is that it is necessary to work with lenders that were born B.C. (before computers) and are still working from paper forms and microfiche files when they should be on PCs, the Web and e-mail.
Leading the charge to change these arcane practices are secondary mortgage market giants like Fannie Mae, or Federal National Mortgage Association, and Freddie Mac.
Hoping to improve communication among lenders, vendors and loan purchasers, Freddie Mac, or Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp., is introducing new Internet-based software called Gold Com to better link everyone involved in a loan origination using automated underwriting.
Freddie Mac is the second largest secondary mortgage market company, which buys loans directly lenders.
“(Gold Com) will become the primary way in which we communicate with partners and we expect it to become the standard for the industry,” said David W. Glenn, president of the congressionally chartered secondary mortgage institution.
Although Freddie Mac developed the system, it also can be used by Fannie Mae, the other major player on the secondary mortgage market, a Freddie Mac spokeswoman told American Banker.
Since being tested this spring with ALE Systems, Fitech Systems and other vendors of loan-origination technology, the system is already being used at no charge by some lenders, American Banker reported.
Virtual improvements
Maps have become a critical way to view the databases of the world. In real estate, maps open the doors to home listings, crime rates and school scores.
But maps won’t help consumers migrate to many valuable real estate databases. Instead, virtual images will become a buyer’s window to how a house works, what it is worth and its history.
Virtual walkthrough technology has been touted for its powerful marketing value, but there is much more to the imaging breakthroughs than showing off pretty houses. Imagine a virtual image of a house interior that has hidden databases embedded behind the pictures.
For example, the user clicks on the stove and taps a database, which shows whether the appliance has a warranty. Or imagine clicking on the granny flat or second unit and discovering whether there is a permit on the house allowing such a unit to be included.
The value of virtual walkthroughs with databases behind them could even exceed the value of a real visit to a home, considering the amount of detailed information on a house that is hidden or not disclosed by realty agents or home sellers in an initial walkthrough.
In one way, this new relationship with data through imagining will make the real estate agent more irrelevant. But it will also help speed up the home sale and the process for both the industry and the consumer.
The more readily accessible this information is, the more pre-screening the buyer will do, which means a winnowing and better matching of buyers with homes and with sellers. At least, that’s what those who are providing computerized data hope will happen.
To date, two companies are scrambling to sell the real estate community virtual imaging technology. Nashville-based IPIX has a single frame 180-degree digital cameral add-on and Be Here Corp. is touting a 360-degree surround image camera.
———-
Chicago Tribune Homes
Additional real estate information, including a monthly index of Inman News Features, is available at Chicago Tribune Homes on the World Wide Web. Go to chicago.tribune.com/go/homes/ and click News & Features.
