 |
||||||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||||||||||
|
in real estate world Online options are significantly changing the process of buying and selling a home By Karen Copp J201 reporter
You are touring a home you are interested in buying. The recently renovated kitchen is smaller
than you'd prefer, but the view of the backyard more than makes up for it. You go from room to room upstairs, visualizing where you will place your furniture. You like what you see during the tour, and better yet, this Southern Mississippi home fits within your price range.
But you've never been to Mississippi. In fact, you have never even stepped foot in the house. The tour took place at a home computer, thanks to a realtor's website. Virtual 360 degree tours such as this one are becoming a staple to the house-hunting process.
Virtual tours are just one of the many ways the Internet is revolutionizing the real estate industry. With the Internet playing such a vital role in the daily lives of many Americans, it's no wonder that surfing the net is becoming the wave of the future for home buyers, sellers and realtors alike. Two months ago, Greg Rohan began surfing the Internet to search for his future home. He began his search by going to a Bloomington database called www.rentbloomington.net that lists available property in the area. His search began there because of the time factor and convenience.
Rohan's reasons for turning to the Internet were also financial. The Indiana University student decided to wait until the last minute as far as finding campus housing goes. When most of the off-campus housing has been snatched up, rent prices for the remaining properties are sometimes lowered to attract a buyer or a lessee.
“I knew I could find a cheaper place by waiting,” Rohan said. He was able to wait longer to start looking because he knew that by searching on the Internet, he could find something quickly. And he did, about three weeks after he began his search.
Like Rohan, many turn to the Internet for its easy access. New gadgets are making it even easier to access the web away from the computer. The newest models of cell phones all have Internet capabilities. Some cars are even equipped with Internet access.
Newer technology means more saving Recently, a new software product was unveiled that allows agents to receive updated leads about listings from the Internet to their cell phone. This device, called the Messenger, allows agents to respond to these updates instantly even if they are out of the office.
Online Multiple Listing Services (MLS) are the driving force behind the involvement of the Internet. These listings contain all of the composite information for the home, in a downloadable format for printing.
Because so much information can be obtained about any number of houses on a single website, the technology wave may leave the prospective home buyer lost at sea, drowning in too much information.
Tiny compact discs containing detailed, organized information about individual homes are the hypothetical flotation ring. Online real estate agencies provide these business card sized discs which contain all the data included in a MLS listing, but also include a virtual tour complete with audio tour from the realtor, online mortgage calculators, online real estate agents.
The interactive discs are like meeting with a realtor at the home, without the drive. They provide all the information that can be found through online searching, like schools in the area and property tax, but without the information overload and navigation.
This simplified information package means house-hunters can spend less time on the Internet deciding what information is pertinent to their search. And it certainly saves time by not having to make a trip to visit a home just to get an idea of what the inside looks like. If time is money, then house-hunting has never been so affordable.
Not only are Americans saving money, but they are making money according to a recent article in the New York Times . The article recognizes trading real estate like shares of stock as a new craze. The same homes are bought and sold multiple times in one day simply for investment purposes.
How is this possible? The Internet of course. Justin Stewart, a student at Indiana University found his home online. Like many college students in Bloomington, Stewart began the search for his future home in the same location as his search for a new pair of shoes- his home computer.
“I look things up on the Internet a lot, so why would I change when looking for houses?” Stewart explained. His search for a home lasted only eight days. Though he ended up buying his home from a friend of the family, searching on the Internet gave him a better idea of what he liked and didn't like when deciding on a house.
Many college students opt to forego the cost of using a realtor and search for houses themselves. However, that mindset won't necessarily continue once students graduate and are looking for houses in a non-university setting. Though Rohan was successful at finding a home using the Internet, he said he would rather go through a realtor the next time he is looking to buy a house. The competition is getting fierce Realtors' commissions are decreasing due to an increase in online agents. Online agents can show more homes and charge a lower commission rate. Traditional brokers must compete with these new online agents, such as ERealty.com and ZipRealty.com who are completely web-based agencies.
This competition has caused a decrease in the average agent's commission from 5.5 percent to 5.1 percent, according to Peter Sealey, a professor of technology and marketing at the University of California, Berkely. He says this is because realtors are losing their stranglehold on the process.
Real Estate agencies are trying to combat these sinking commissions by riding the Internet wave as well. Many of their client services, like clientele's files, are maintained online so both the realtor and the client can view progress. To keep up, Century 21 provides technology training classes for its agents. The curriculum covers everything from mass emailing of clients to navigating online notification systems of client appointments.
Realtor Kary Scholl has taken advantage of the new training Century 21 has put together to become as computer-savvy as possible. In fact, he does most of his work online; his main form of client communication is e-mail. “I couldn't imagine working in this business 30 years ago, doing it all with paper,” said Scholl.
Considering that Internet consumers communicate with agents via email 88 percent of the time, it is essential that all realtors are capable of this form of communication if they want to keep up with their clients.
Century 21 isn't the only major agency adapting. Caldwell Banker runs television advertisements strictly promoting its online capabilities. Advertising online has been adopted by many agencies as well. Not only are these ads seen by the intended audience, but it is actually more cost-effective to advertise online than in a newspaper.
“For the cost of one week's newspaper ad, most agents can fund their listings, virtual tours, and personal Web sites and some Internet placement for about the same costs,” according to Blanche Evans in her article Five Reasons Why You Need Internet Marketing.
A way of indirectly advertising Internet capabilities is on “For Sale” signs. Almost all signs include an email address or a website to contact. In some cases, the websites of real estate agencies are in larger and bolder fonts than phone numbers. When people drive by these signs, their eye is drawn to the Internet contact rather than the telephone.
Another form of communication between realtors and clients, and even clients to other clients, is the addition of blogs to agencies' websites. These agencies realize that the most vital online marketing tool is their website and what it includes.
This is why many real estate agencies now hire web designers to create their website. The importance agencies place on the Internet expands the field to those typically unassociated with real estate, like web designers and technological support staff.
The companies behind the scenes What most house-hunters do not know is the online virtual tours that many agencies' websites include may have been produced by another company. 360house and RealTech Media are two of those companies.
Agencies contact 360house.com with requests for online tours. 360house.com sends videographers to the houses to collect the images and information. 360house.com employs Real Tech Media to put this data together and burn it onto the discs in the user-friendly form which are in high demand. Joe Prusz, the founder of RealTech Media, says they process 300-500 discs weekly.
RealTech Media was founded in Colorado, but its employees live in Indiana. 360house.com operates out of Utah.
How do these companies, which are located all across the nation, communicate and transfer data? The Internet of course.
Lauren Zaczek is employed by RealTech Media and is responsible for downloading the data onto the discs and packaging and shipping the final product. She works completely out of her home. In fact, she rarely even sees her boss. Most communication with her boss, Joe Prusz, takes place over e-mail, Zaczek says. A group that has somewhat little Internet involvement is For Sale By Owners. FSBOs are combating the undertow of the Internet wave. Like small fish in a big pond, these are individuals selling their own home.
Without the same technological and monetary resources to create comperable cutting edge, professional websites, FSBOs are left in the wake by agencies. They must struggle to stay afloat with big real estate firms to compete for potential buyers.
FSBO websites estimate that 25% of all homes sold this year will be sold by the owner. National Association of Realtors said that FSBOs accounted for 14% of all home sales just two years ago.
To what do FSBOs accredit this potential for a huge percentage jump? The Internet of course. While some owners have already gotten their feet wet, FSBO organizations predict that many more plan on diving into marketing on the web.
As for home buyers, surfing the net is going swimmingly. The percentage of those using the Internet will only increase in the near future. And those with a vested interest in marketing on it see no reason for a plunge in those percentages. Have you had an experience with Internet real estate that you would like to share? Tell us about it by e-mailing us here!
Page designed and edited by: Jackie Lowe Last Updated: May 2, 2005 |
||||||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
||||||||||||
