The Washington Post
Author: Karen Tanner Allen
Mar 24, 2001

As part of a larger article:

Log on to many real estate agents' Web sites and you'll see more than just a resume and listing of houses. Virtual tours! Information about the neighborhoods! And, most prized, direct links to the Multiple Listing Service.

For prospective buyers or sellers, the Internet has come to mean ready availability of all sorts of real estate information that just wasn't easily available a few years ago. For real estate agents, it has come to mean even more -- a dramatic change in how they do business.

Only a few years ago, new agents could hang their shingles with just 60 hours or so of courses and access to the Multiple Listing Service. But many agents today, especially from smaller companies, say that making money requires a heavy investment in a Web site and associated technology.

"Today, more than half of my business comes off the Web," said Bob Jurgensen, an associate broker with Weichert in Manassas, who has spent about $25,000 in computer equipment. "It's a much more expeditious process."

It's a "significant lead-generator," agreed Stephen Israel, president of the Buyers Edge Co., a buyers' broker firm in Bethesda. "The Web's been an instrumental part of our company's business."

Because so many consumers go online to search for a new home, real estate agents can't afford to forgo other costly must-haves: digital cameras, to transport photographs of a prospective home onto the Internet; fancy real estate programs, to speed the transaction process and compile comparable values; and a hand-held digital organizer, to keep current with listings and clients, even while on the road. A mid-1999 survey by the National Association of Realtors showed that nearly one-quarter of potential home buyers shopped for a home online, a percentage certain to have grown by today.

But real estate agents have embraced the Internet with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Personal Web sites can range from the elaborate to the basic, the latter with simply information about the agent, a profile and a way to get in touch. Many agents are content to attach their name to their company's general site, while others have invested in a Web site all their own. More elaborate sites can cost tens of thousands of dollars to launch and several thousand each year to maintain. In some cases, it can mean paying a whole other salary just to keep it fresh.

Many agents, especially those who specialize in particular neighborhoods, say the more traditional ways to cultivate clients still work: referrals, mailings and good personal service.

"A buyer has never beat me to a listing using the Internet. Not once," said Liz Brent, an agent at Taylor Real Estate in Washington. She points to a listing in Chevy Chase, D.C., that had become available a few days earlier, was mobbed at the Sunday open house, but was not found on three of the major sites. Offers were registered on the property, but no one relying on the Internet could have known about it, Brent said. Brent has her own Web site, which she said functions more as an online resume and as a resource for clients.

Others who have invested in the technology credit their site with generating new business, serving their clients and, in certain cases, keeping a smaller business competitive against the industry's giants.

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