Tips for Using the Web
Buying and Selling Real Estate Online
By Clay Hathorn
Aiming to appeal to a metropolitan New York clientele, Donna White figured that a two-line
newspaper ad to sell her suburban house that basically said "3-bdr in Aberdeen, New Jersey"
seemed a little flat. So she dressed up her marketing a bit, listing the house in an online
service with a Web-site ad that begins this way: "Pristine custom contemporary with water
views: Lounge as sailboats pass this custom ranch with professional landscaping, diagonal
tongue-and-groove cedar siding."
Even if you're unclear about the "diagonal tongue-and-groove" (a way of fitting the siding
together), the place sounds pretty swanky, huh? "That's what's great about marketing on the
Internet," says White, who lives in Deerfield, Florida. "You're not limited in what you can
say. You can write up the character of the house. Show a picture. Where else could you put an
ad like that and have exposure to anyone, anywhere? It would cost a fortune."
Prospective buyers worldwide can view Donna White's three-bedroom house, for sale on the WWW.
White is one of the growing number of people turning to the World Wide Web to help them buy
or sell a house. The reasons to try the Web are numerous: Sellers can provide many more
enticing details ("lounge as sailboats pass") at a much lower cost than in newspaper ads and
can reach people anywhere; buyers can explore real estate options at their convenience on
their own computer.
But don't get the wrong idea: Although the Internet offers many options for real estate, it's
probably not wise for a seller to rely solely an Internet listing or for a buyer only to
peruse the Web for homes. Not only is the Internet still a secondary source for most buyers
and sellers, but the Web lacks the emotional wallop needed to bring about a home sale.
"Nobody buys a house from a brochure," says Jody Lane, who runs the Realty Locator site, an
online listing of homes for sale. "It's the same thing on the Internet."
Yet as a supplement to marketing or a great way to find homes, the Web is proving to be a
valuable medium. "It's a good tool to use with other advertising," says White. "Not everyone
in the whole world is computer literate. But on the Web you're open to the whole wide world."
Selling
So for home sellers who are willing to try the Web, what's next? Well, you have two broad
options: enlisting an agent or selling the home yourself. The Web is making more attractive
the "for-sale-by-owner" option, known as FSBO (or, as those with the lingo say, "fizzbo").
Traditionally, roughly 15 to 20 percent of home sellers go this route, mostly to avoid the
6-percent commissions of real estate brokers. The trade-off is that FSBOs have had to market
their property without access to the local multiple listing service (MLS), which is
proprietary to real estate agents (although this is beginning to change). FSBOs have
traditionally relied on newspaper ads and lawn signs to get the word out.
But the Web's capability to reach people has opened new marketing avenues for FSBOs. Probably
the most comprehensive FSBO site is the Abele Owners' Network site, which "looks good enough
to give agents a run for their money," says Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine. FSBOs can
list their homes on the site under several plans: high-cost is $105, the low-cost is free. By
comparison, listing your property with a broker will typically cost 3 percent of the selling
price -- several thousand dollars on the average home. To list property on the Owners'
Network site, sellers write a description of the property in a text file -- no knowledge of
HTML is required, but a flair for the descriptive is encouraged ("pristine custom
contemporary . . ."). Sellers can also submit a photograph of the property, either a
digitized image by e-mail or regular picture by post.
In addition, the Owners' Network provides resources for FSBOs, including links to brokers,
agents, and others who help handle many aspects of the whole real estate ordeal -- from
hosting open houses to coordinating the closing -- for a flat fee. "It's a great way to take
advantage of the marketplace," says White, who listed her New Jersey home in the Owners'
Network and received an offer from a person who discovered the property online (she didn't
sell). "It gives people an opportunity to dial up and see a picture of the house," she says.
If you sign an agreement with a broker, chances are that the agreement will be exclusive,
meaning you can't market the property the FSBO way. Your agent will list the house in the
local multiple listing service (MLS), which is computerized but not necessarily on the
Internet. But that doesn't mean you can't have a nifty Web site to help sell your home. Many
companies, agents, and local MLSs have a presence on the Web. The biggest broker-run sites
(discussed below) have tens of thousands of listings.
However, these sites are not comprehensive, and many homes won't automatically be listed. If
that's the case, you could encourage your agent to get access to the Web. Or you could list
your property with a site that takes such listings. HomeScout, one of the Web's largest real
estate sites, has a service called Home on the Web that allows a seller to submit information
on their property, including how to contact the broker.
A Buyer's Market
For those of you looking to buy real estate, the Web offers many choices and timesaving
features. You can search for homes across town or across the hemisphere. Several sites offer
thousands of detailed listings, plus photographs and even information on communities and
schools nearby. The sites mentioned in this article all feature searchable indexes -- just
plug in the city, the size of the house, and the price range, and the search engines will
divulge which homes meet those criteria.
With Realty Locator, for example, you can call up one of 21 U.S. metropolitan areas to obtain
a wealth of real estate information, including such related information as a profile of local
schools. Additionally, the site has more than 100,000 real estate links in 10,000 U.S. cities
and towns. HomeScout, compiled by the Cobalt Group, a multimedia company in Seattle,
Washington (U.S.A.), has gathered information from 260 databases to provide users with
information on more than 500,000 homes.
CyberHomes, which has agreements with multiple listing agencies in cities and counties across
the country, places thousands of listings; the National Association of Realtors takes the
multiple listings from realtor associations nationwide to offer thousands of home listings;
and the Owners' Network is the best place to search the FSBO market for homes that even an
agent might not be aware of. And who knows? Some of them may even have water views.
Links
Abele Owners Network:
http://www.owners.com/
HomeScout:
http://homescout.com/
Realty Locator:
http://www.realtylocator.com/
CyberHomes:
http://www.cyberhomes.com/
National Association of Realtors:
http://www.realtor.com/
Related Links
Talus Multiple Listing Service, Inc.:
http://talusmls.com/
If your local bank comes up short on appraiser referrals, the Appraisal Institute has plenty
of names; visit its Web site at
http://www.appraisalinstitute.org/.)