Kim Reed of Chicago toured 15 resale houses in the suburbs before giving up in frustration.
The frequent commutes to look at existing houses were time-consuming and the agent wasn’t listening to her requests for a large kitchen and other features, she said.
Reed then decided to buy new construction, and to forgo the real estate agent, opting to shop the far-flung subdivisions from her city home on the Internet. “It cut down my shopping time considerably,” she said. “I literally bought a place in two weeks.”
With her decision, Reed joined the small but growing number of buyers who do research on the Internet before buying new construction. While there are no industry-wide statistics, some builders say they are seeing more and more buyers using the Internet before visiting their sales centers.
Del Webb Corp. (www.delWebb.com), which builds senior lifestyle developments across the country, has seen its electronic correspondence almost double during the past year. “We are receiving 80 to 100 e-mails a day from people who have visited our Web site and who are interested in more information about our homes,” said Lynne Reaves, public relations manager for the Phoenix-based builder.
The Internet offers consumers the chance to search for information 24 hours a day from the privacy of their homes or offices. They can narrow their selection of new-construction subdivisions to visit and reduce the amount of time spent driving between locations. This is particularly helpful to buyers who are relocating. Many also like to shop, at least in the beginning, without having to listen to sales pitches. (And, not all builders in this market welcome real estate agents and the resulting payout of commissions.)
The downside is that the information varies widely from Web site to Web site. One builder may have just one page listing the name and address of its subdivisions, general prices, and a telephone number. Try to click on the screen for more details and nothing happens.
Others have sophisticated layers of colorful graphics showing 360-degree views of rooms and even virtual tours. You shouldn’t assume, though, that a fancy Web site means that the builder is any more qualified or reputable than the builder with a simplistic site.
The information also can be overwhelming when presented in such an infinite universe. There are, however, ways to streamline your approach. Start by selecting your parameters, such as price range, geographic area and housing style.
Reed focused on builders in DuPage and Cook Counties, then looked for floor plans. “The kitchen was important to me because I’m studying to be a chef,” she said. “I knew I wanted a big kitchen, so if I looked at a kitchen that was 7 feet by 7 feet, I knew it wouldn’t work for me.”
After a few days of research, she visited a few developments and settled on a 2-bedroom, 2 1/2-bathroom house at the Signature Club, a Wiseman-Hughes development in Naperville. She plans to move in this fall.
As you begin your tour, remember that Web sites are advertisements. Many have floor plans and prices, but most do not include the prices of all those options that consumers love. That information rarely is found in builders’ sales brochures either, as prices often are negotiable and can vary, based on the size of the product. Also, it’s easier to sell options when buyers fall in love with them before seeing the price.
Some Web sites will include “teaser” information that tells you enough to prompt your interest, then asks you to visit the property. That’s all part of the sales process, as they want you to visit the site.
Here is a sampling of what Web surfers will find:
HomeBuilder.com boasts 105,000 properties from 13,000 builders across the country. The National Association of Home Builders, based in Washington, D.C., has a minority stake in the site, which is owned by RealSelect Inc., based in Thousand Oaks, Calif.
The site has sections that list properties, and information on mortgage rates, insurance quotes, and moving costs. The property listings are grouped by state, so you first choose a state, then narrow the search by price, geographic area, house size, moving date or builder. You cannot search in just one section of town, however.
A recent search for all new developments in Carpentersville, for example, found 53 properties. These are grouped by builder and shown with prices. Icons next to the listings show whether there are pictures, floor plans and virtual tours available.
You then click on a price and see the square footage, directions to the site and a list of the number of rooms. If floor plans are available, there is another button to click on to view them.
There also is a “resource center” where you can compare salaries, cost of living, climate and demographic information between many major cities in the United States and Canada. Before you can see a report, though, you must fill out a form that asks for your name, address and telephone number, details about your move and whether you are using a real estate agent or want to be referred to one.
You also can compare crime statistics between two towns. A disclaimer on the site says the data is from 1997 and is not always reported accurately or uniformly. If you have concerns about a community’s crime rate, your best bet is to also talk to the local police department and nearby residents.
Pulte Homes, based in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., and the nation’s largest builder, also has its Web site (www.pulte.com) grouped by state, then city. A search of the Chicago section, for example, shows a list of 10 developments, with prices, house sizes, floor plans, elevations and a map of the area with the subdivision locations marked.
Click on a “Yellow Pages” area to search for schools near the subdivision. The schools are grouped by level, such as high schools or middle schools, and are shown on a map. However, it does not specifically list which schools are within the boundary area of each subdivision.
The site contains about 7,000 images of floor plans and elevations from its 400 subdivisions.
While many builders include floor plans on their Web sites, Palatine-based Concord Homes does not. “They’d love to have floor plans, but we don’t include them,” said Roger Mankedick, executive vice president of sales and marketing. “We feel that floor plans are going to be misleading and not representative of the space.”
The company has considered using virtual tours on their Web site (www.concordhomes.com), but wants to wait until the technology is more advanced and can load images more quickly, said Mike Templeton, director of marketing.
Buyers who want floor plans, however, can get them at the sales office. This may defeat the purpose for those who want privacy in their home search, but it’s all part of the sales process. “What we’re trying to do is give them the opportunity to view the models,” Templeton said. “When we give out floor plans, it’s usually with the anticipation they are going through the models.”
Residential Homes of America Inc. (www.res-homes.com), based in north suburban Green Oaks, has a section on its Web site that gives buyers updates on the progress of their house during 12 major construction stages. The information is available to anyone looking at the Web site and is found by going to the “homeowners” section, then clicking on the construction schedule for the particular subdivision.
The “homeowners” section also has a “How a Home is Built” page with 18 pictures showing major construction stages. The “project” section has information on prices and directions to the builder’s subdivisions in Lake and Cook Counties and New Berlin, Wis.
The “local areas” section has information about schools, churches, parks and shopping –but for all of Lake County, rather than by community. This is not helpful for those who want to know which public schools serve a particular subdivision.
The Web site notes that this information will be expanded to cover the other counties this company is building in.
Wheaton-based Wiseman-Hughes Enterprises (www.wisemanhughes.com) includes a virtual tour with some floor plans. This shows three dimensional images of interior rooms and allows you to zoom in on sections of the room.
The virtual tour gives a realistic view of the space, but is time-consuming. You have to download a special plug-in to view it, which takes 5 to 10 minutes, depending upon modem speed. During the tour, the image is fuzzy for a few seconds as each new picture loads. Wiseman-Hughes is building in Aurora, Naperville, Plainfield and St. Charles.
While the Internet was helpful to house shopper Reed, she said that additional information about the individual suburbs would have aided her search. “Since I’ve lived downtown and I’ve never been to Naperville or Bolingbrook, it would have been nice to know if there was shopping nearby or things to do for young people.”
Wiseman-Hughes’ site does not contain detailed information about the towns or the schools because that information is readily available on municipal and school Web sites, said Pam Schawel, general sales manager. “We’re really not trying to represent the municipality and there are so many other links available” with that information. While the Internet can help with a home search, consumers should be careful about verifying the information. Mary and Marc Haas encountered discrepancies with pricing found on some sites.
“Some of the builders included the price of the lot (in their Internet advertising) and some didn’t,” Mary Haas said. “That became our first question to ask. We found the lots were from $50,000 to $120,000 more, so that would throw off your pricing.”
They then bought a four-bedroom house in the Reserve at Wheatlands, a Summit Development project in Aurora, where the lot price is included in the house price. The couple found Summit Development on NewHomeNetwork.com.
There is no clear consensus on whether buyers in the future will use this medium for the entire transaction. Many builders say the process will always require personal interaction. Besides, who would want to buy a house without walking through it in person?
“I don’t know if you’ll get people buying directly from the Internet,” said Jim Zeumer, vice president of corporate communications for Pulte, “but clearly they use it to make the decision, `Do I go to that community?’ “
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MORE ON THE INTERNET: Start surfing the Internet from a list of Chicago area builder Web sites at chicagotribune.com/go/newhomes
