Open
house market
The
Internet is creating do-it-yourself home buyers, but agents
find it useful too.
By Kimberly Blanton, Globe Staff
March 27, 2006
Finding the perfect Braintree home to accommodate three
children, his wife, and his mother-in-law has been a challenge
for Mark Riley. But searching for the house has been a breeze
thanks to a proliferation of Internet tools that have freed
buyers from total dependence on real estate agents.
Since October the couple has walked through more than two
dozen homes -- most of which they found on their own using
ZipRealty.com or Realtor.com.
''We know what would work for us and what won't work for
us, so we can eliminate houses quicker than the realtor,"
said Mark Riley. ''We know that's not going to work, as
opposed to the realtor saying, 'This might work.' "
Real estate agents used to closely guard property information
in bound volumes of homes for sale. Only they knew what
was for sale, when it was coming to market or how long it
had been on the market, and how it compared to similar properties.
To size up the market, a buyer could spend many weekends
being driven around by an agent viewing properties.
Today, the consumer is in the driver's seat. Using websites
from Homepages.com, to Zillow.com, a growing number of home
buyers -- and some cutting-edge sellers -- are able to tap
into so much data that they are doing without agents.
Agents increasingly are using the Internet to retain or
create relationships with buyers through websites that allow
the buyers to do elaborate searches for properties and other
information on their own, such as Realtor.com, an official
site of the National Association of Realtors, and ZipRealty.com,
an agent-affiliated website.
''We're still waiting to see where it's going, but it's
definitely changing the whole industry," said Dorcas
Miller, a Concord agent with ReMax Walden Country. ''The
Web does a lot of the selling now, and we're doing more
interpreting."
Miller used to shuttle clients to dozens of houses. Now
she shows them only a handful, and she says it takes much
less time to help them find the right home because they
can review online photographs or ''virtual" video tours
to see what a house looks like inside and out before deciding
whether to visit it.
The tours, which were rare four years ago, are now part
of 13 percent of Boston-area home listings and 18 percent
of $1 million-plus properties, according to MLS Property
Information Network, a major property database. The tours
are popping up on virtually any site that features homes,
including Condodomain.com, which displays luxury projects
in downtown Boston; agent-sponsored sites such as Coldwell
Banker's NewEnglandMoves.com; and Boston.com, the website
affiliated with The Boston Globe.
Matthew Murphy, founder of Boston Virtual Imaging, said
he produced several hundred tours during 2002, his first
year of business, but sales grew to 1,500 tours last year.
''The use has increased exponentially," he said.
Web-savvy buyers are demanding such information nationwide.
The National Association of Realtors said 77 percent of
home buyers search the Web for prospects, up from 2 percent
a decade ago. Its California affiliate estimated that one-third
of agents' business now comes to them over the Web, rather
than through traditional routes such as referrals.
Real estate agents admit that the free-for-all Internet
poses a new form of competition. But even those who embrace
these new tools said their role in home buying and selling
is far from obsolete. After the initial search, agents are
still needed to get buyers into the houses they want to
view personally, help them with their bids, and do the legal
work to close the deal.
Buyers who've done their own searches ''know what they
like about a property, and they want to see it, so my life
is a lot more efficient than it used to be," said Lee
Robinson, an agent for Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage
in Milton. ''We do make the whole transaction a whole lot
easier, because we do know what we are doing."
ZipRealty Inc. has capitalized on this trend. In contrast
to old-style agencies that created websites to advertise
clients' properties, ZipRealty is a brokerage service that
was built around its website in 1999. The company encourages
clients to exhaustively search house listings on ZipRealty.com,
which can sort them by city, ZIP code, address, or listing
number. ZipRealty said comScore Media Metrix, which tracks
website traffic, counted 850,000 visits to ZipRealty.com
last December, a 63 percent increase from a year earlier.
In July, a busy summer month, visits reached more than 1
million.
The Rileys constantly search ZipRealty.com for houses between
$400,000 and $600,000. They have found it challenging to
uncover a property with a yard, three bedrooms, and extra
space for Denise Riley's mother on their modest household
budget. He is a stand-up comedian and middle-school teacher,
and she is a personal trainer.
ZipRealty automatically e-mails the couple house listings
that fit their parameters, and it updates listings several
times a day. But their agent at ZipRealty, David Previti,
hangs back until the customer tells him what they want to
view in person. Mark Riley cruises the Internet and his
e-mail on his own, saving houses in a ''favorites"
file for Previti to review and set up appointments.
''He takes care of that legwork," Riley said. Previti
is also ''the go-between for putting in offers."
On ZipRealty's interactive map, the couple looks up houses
for sale on specific Braintree streets or by neighborhood.
A ''price track" feature reports on asking-price reductions.
They can check out neighborhood information, too, through
a ''proximity" search, which allows home buyers to
search for houses near a preferred school or obtain detailed
information about recent sales or the number of single,
divorced, and married people living in the area.
Sellers have been more reluctant than buyers to use the
Web, particularly in a softening housing market, though
numerous sites permit homeowners to sell on their own. The
National Association of Realtors estimates 13 percent of
sellers did so last year, down from 16 percent in 1999,
when the economy was booming.
Competition from the Web is changing the way agents do
business in many ways. ReMax's Miller began offering clients
an a la carte menu of services for sellers ''who need a
little help" but ''feel they can do it themselves."
For $2,000 she will list a house on the multiple listing
service and give them a ''For Sale" sign and a lockbox
for storing a key on the property. For $3,000, she also
provides limited marketing in local newspapers or printed
listing sheets.
She said the full-service brokerage that charges the standard
agents' fee, up to 3 percent of a home's selling price,
still represents the majority of her business. ''Most people
really don't want limited service when they see what they
are missing -- nice printing, virtual tours, floor plans,
all the things that we traditionally put with a listing
to explain it to a buyer," she said.
Don't tell that to Ellen and Anthony Petrilli. The Massachusetts
couple wanted to sell their vacation cottage on Lake Winnisquam
in New Hampshire but couldn't find an agent eager to take
the listing. Ellen Petrilli discovered ZeroBrokerFees.com
and listed the cottage on the website, which was founded
on the premise that Internet traffic attracts more potential
buyers than foot traffic. After a year online, the site
already draws about 3,000 visitors per day, said founder
and chief executive Ed Williams.
''It is a fallacy that a broker needs to shore up any real
estate transaction engaged in by two people," Williams
said. ''A simple attorney for a purchase-and-sale review
is all you need, and a home inspection."
ZeroBrokerFees.com fees start at $49.95 to list a property
with one photograph and up to $79.95 for a listing with
six photos.
The Petrilli's cottage sold in three weeks in January 2005,
sparking envy from neighbors who had contracts with agents.
''If you have half a brain and if you can't sell your own
house where you raise a family and live and you love it,"
Ellen Petrilli said, ''how can someone else sell it?"
Link to Original Boston Globe Article
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