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

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.

"I've found it's an expense that's well worth it," said Steve Loew, with Re/Max Realty in Northwest Washington and Bethesda. He estimates spending $2,000 to start the site about a year ago and pays a contractor more than $100 a month to maintain it. He said he thought it would draw more out-of-town clients who find him directly from his site; instead, he's found that it's been more useful to win the business of local clients who might have gotten his name from other sources.

From their own computers, consumers can now view almost everything they need to imagine a prospective home -- the exterior, each room (just click on an image, and there's the picture) and comparable values of houses on that street. The Internet provides links to local activities, information about the neighborhood, and to major real estate sites, such as realtor.com, homesdatabase.com and homeadvisor.com. They can access the Multiple Listing Service, once available only to real estate professionals.

Indeed, consumers can find almost any information they need except for the specific address, access to a property and, at times, the most up-to-the-minute status of a listing. That's when they need an agent, and that's why agents like to have their own names associated with the search process.

For a small firm such as Buyer's Edge in Bethesda, marketing on the Web has been crucial to survival, said Israel. He estimates that the Web generates one-third of the company's business.

Over several years, Buyers Edge has spent about $50,000 to create and reconfigure its site; it also spends thousands of dollars annually on upkeep. Such a niche company would otherwise be unable to afford the advertisements necessary to compete against the mega-real estate firms, Israel said. "You have to be creative and find other avenues to be successful. The Web has been a viable way to do that for us," Israel said.

Realty veteran Donald Snider spent five months developing a Web site before opening his small company, EIEIO.com, just one year ago. He wanted a database where he could display home listings, digital pictures of houses, comparable sales, school reports and public records.

The online tools help this fledgling company keep its overhead low enough to offer a lower commission than larger agencies, said Snider, whose company serves the metropolitan area and is based in Potomac. "The Internet is an efficiency tool," he said.

Several home buyers attest that, this way, they can save much of the old-fashioned legwork and narrow the search, a huge appeal to out- of-towners and those who just don't have much time for an extensive house-hunt.

That's why Robb Kookaby, a computer programmer, hooked up with EIEIO when searching for a new house closer to his office. "We had essentially one weekend, once a month, to look at homes," said Kookaby. He and his wife wanted to avoid wasting time and getting caught in traffic to visit houses where they wouldn't want to live.

Online, "we could narrow down our choices relatively easily to see what was available," he said.

The couple pared their search by judging listings from EIEIO's Web site and e-mails from Snider. They visited three houses in one weekend before choosing one in Frederick, close to the MARC train station. Kookaby also used EIEIO to market his existing home.

In another survey, the National Association of Realtors reported that the more productive real estate professionals are, the more likely they are to report generating business from online services. Two-thirds of agents who earned $250,000 or more in 1998 generated at least some of their business from online services, according to a report issued by the association in 1999.

While conducting so much real estate business online can be a boon, the upfront cost of technology and training can be steep for smaller businesses. That worries Lee Bowman, executive director of the National Association of Real Estate Brokers Inc., a Washington trade association for minority-owned firms. Bowman said smaller offices may struggle because they can't keep up with the technology. The association plans to organize more free or reduced-rate technical seminars and support for its members.

Jurgensen in Virginia is among many who says he conducts business differently because of the Internet. Just a few years ago, he spent more time recruiting clients through signs, referrals and newspaper advertisements.

He also recalls spending much more time driving prospective buyers around town, holding Sunday open houses and timing prospective buyers' commutes for them.

Now Jurgensen holds just two or three open houses a year -- not only because of the Internet, but also because of the strong market - - when he used to hold 15 or 20. His buyers now take virtual tours of many houses online. They ride around and check out the neighborhoods on their own.

He said, "They do all these things and I'm not doing them anymore."

4400 Jenifer Street NW   Washington DC 20015
202.364.1700