Anne Kmit and her husband were ready to leave the friendly but frosty confines of Minnesota behind when they retired. They wanted to look for a home in a warmer climate but Kmit, a stroke victim, is confined to a wheelchair, making travel difficult.
No matter. The couple plugged in the computer and spent the next three or four days searching the Internet for potential retirement communities in California, Arizona, Nevada and Florida. They found one they liked enough to visit–a Del Webb Sun City project near Las Vegas.
“Out of all the places we looked at, Sun City had everything we wanted,” Kmit said. “We visited the community and purchased a beautiful home on the golf course.”
Searching the Internet made finding their new retirement home a lot simpler, saving the couple hours of time and days of difficult travel to numerous locations, Kmit said. That, combined with the fact that adults aged 55 to 74 are among the nation’s fastest-growing group of computer users, is making the Web a major new marketing avenue for retirement communities.
Thirty percent of adults aged 55 to 74 own a computer and 28 percent regularly use an online service, according to Peter Esty, executive director of SeniorNet, a national non-profit organization that provides computer and technology information to seniors.
At one of its Sun City projects, some 65 percent of its residents have personal computers, according to Phoenix-based Del Webb Corp., the nation’s largest builder of senior housing. Del Webb has closed 12 sales via the Internet since it opened a Web site two years ago. More than 160,000 people have logged onto the site, which includes an overview of the company, detailed community information, floor plans, price lists, model-home photographs and news updates on company activities.
“Most of our customers are using the Internet. They can obtain accurate information quickly and review only topics in which they are interested,” says Dave Schreiner, the company’s vice president for marketing. “It is rapidly becoming the source our buyers use most to find information about the Sun Cities and other retirement communities.”
Sun City communities are located in Phoenix; Las Vegas; Palm Desert and Roseville, Calif.; Hilton Head, S.C.; and Georgetown, Texas.
Liz Poppens
Upshifting
A new study underscores the radical shift taking place in the real estate industry, showing both realty agents and consumers are more accepting of the changes than they were just two years ago.
The study, by Weston Edwards & Associates of Laguna Beach, Calif., reveals that consumers want one person at the center of the home sale process as a source not only for housing information, but also for loans, appraisals and insurance.
The study of the nation’s top 250 firms says that interest in the one-stop-shopping concept has skyrocketed in the last two years. It notes that almost all of the top firms offer mortgages and almost half provide other major services that have traditionally been provided by others.
HFS is pushing the one-stop concept at all of its franchises–Coldwell Banker, Century 21 and ERA–to increase profit margins, but competitors are hot on their trail. The HFS franchises handle almost 25 percent of all home sales, the report said.
Profits will look better for firms offering additional services, the report said. After years of watching profits slide because of higher commission splits, competitive pressures and investments in technology, the uptick will be a welcome change.
The study also found:
– One-stop-shopping has become commonplace for the home buyer. Some 93 percent of the top 50 residential brokerage firms provide mortgages, 44 percent provide title insurance or closing services and 42 percent provide homeowners insurance.
– Lenders’ efforts to bypass real estate agents haven’t worked. Although about 25 percent of home buyers have been to a lender before seeing a realty agent, 42 percent of the visits were just a discussion of interest rates; half of the buyers were prequalified for a loan. About half of all home buyers follow the agent’s recommendations on where to get a loan. The study found that first-time home buyers followed the recommendations the most, while those moving up generally already had financing.
– Realty agents have begun quickly adopting new technology as a key business tool, the report said. All of the top realty firms now have Web sites, along with 90 percent of the top 250 firms.
The number of firms that provided mortgage services and gave laptop computers to agents more than doubled in the last two years, from 31 percent to 69 percent. The number of agents who took their applications live almost tripled, from 15 percent to 43 percent. The number of firms using automated underwriting systems blossomed from only two firms to 47 percent of all firms studied.
– The study also found that slightly more than half of Realtor-based lending is a partnership, generally with mortgage bankers. Realtors are making money in lending, the study said, with 80 percent of Realtor-based lending at the top 250 firms described as profitable. The lending provides a greater profit per transaction than that from brokering the home, the study said.
The study is available from Weston Edwards and Associates, 714-376-0590.
Owning’s downside
Vincent Castellano is a man with a mission: Give property owners their day on the Internet.
The former electrical engineer, investment banking analyst, newspaper real estate editor and now radio and public-access cable TV personality has set up an Internet site for aggrieved property owners in New York, Connecticut and New Jersey to share nightmarish-tenant stories and useful information.
Castellano, who made his mark in broadcasting with an 18-part cable series entitled “Should Queens Secede?” believes that tenants get the lion’s share of media coverage and public sympathy while property owners in the region, particularly small owners, are engulfed in the most regulated real estate market in the country, according to a statement on Castellano’s home page.
But Castellano has given them a voice, on both a public-access cable show and an AM radio show in New York entitled “Real Estate Nightmares.” He also launched a Web site, which has continued to grow.
The site contains real estate articles by Castellano (with his decidedly pro-owner perspective) and guest writers (though none appears on the site now) and, of course, nightmarish scenarios by property owners.
Some are downright scary. One involves a 10-year fight by a mother and wheelchair-bound son who have been unable to evict a tenant from the single-family house they had purchased.
Others involve various unscrupulous tenant ploys to avoid paying rent, including one tenant who insisted that phantom squeaks in his apartment’s wood floor caused him harm, though construction experts were never able to isolate the noise.
Castellano puts his research talents to good use in setting up links to numerous trade associations, property rights groups, New York housing agencies (there are 26 in New York City alone), local news outlets and politicians’ offices. He also includes an extensive bibliography of resources for property owners.
Toilet training
It’s not rocket science and it won’t knock points off your next refinancing, but when homeowners need help with the toilet plumbing they generally need it fast and in great detail.
That’s the focus behind www.toiletology.com, a site devoted to fixing the water closet when something goes wrong. It also tells how to keep things from going wrong.
The site, hosted by Kay Keating, is a thorough guide to fixing just about any problem that can crop up with a toilet. Keating “walks” the reader through each step, giving hints on how to make the task easier. Except for the title, Keating doesn’t go for the easy humor usually associated with the topic.
Topics covered include everything from “How a toilet works” to replacing hard-to-reach parts and “The Lazy Flush.” There’s even a chapter on the history of the flush toilet.
One page of the site is filled with comments like this: “Thanks, Kay. You saved my life today. I tried everything but could not dislodge the matchbox car until I found your site. Keep those toilets flushing.”
Thankful readers of the site who left compliments run the gamut from professional plumbers to do-it-yourselfers in Paris and Singapore.
Keating is no stranger to home repair. The site grew out of a class Keating taught for the Montgomery County, Maryland, Department of Recreation more than 20 years ago. She’s continued teaching repair clinics, and has written home repair articles for newspapers and magazines.
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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.
