Home Shoppers Racing to the Internet in Record Numbers

1998 was a record setting year for home sales and increasingly home shoppers were going online to REALTOR.COM, the official Internet site of National Association of Realtors (NAR), looking for a helpful and easy resource to assist them in the home purchasing process. One home shopper, Warren Burch of Roanoke, VA got more than useful information when he logged onto REALTOR.COM and entered its "Win your next home here" Sweepstakes.

Today, REALTOR.COM publicly announced that Burch is the Sweepstakes grand prizewinner, collecting $250,000 to use towards the purchase of his dream home.

"My wife and I had been in the market to buy a home for several months and went on REALTOR.COM through AOL to do research. Because we are America Online members, we had the ability to link directly to REALTOR.COM's Sweepstakes," said Burch. "Once we started playing the game, we found that REALTOR.COM has millions of home listings and just the kind of tools we needed. My family and I never dreamt that we would win the grand prize. This truly is an amazing experience."

REALTOR.COM is committed to providing buyers, sellers, and real estate professionals with the latest facts, data, resources, and tools to help facilitate the home buying process. The site has over 1.2 million home listings, along with information on financing, calculators, a library of real estate articles, moving services, remodeling resources, content that walks a first time home buyer through every step of a home purchase, and a database of real estate professionals.

"People are increasingly turning to the Internet as a means to educate themselves about the home shopping and buying process. In fact, REALTOR.COM’s usage rate more than tripled last year, and this year the site has averaged 3.8 million visitors each month," said Stuart Wolff, CEO and chairman of RealSelect. "We decided to do the Sweepstakes as a fun way to reward visitors for choosing to use our site to hone their knowledge about the home market before and during their shopping process. We think people - especially Mr. Burch - are finding that it does "pay" to go online, and we see this significantly and positively impacting the future of the home purchasing industry."

The REALTOR.COM "Win Your Next Home Here" Sweepstakes, presented by America Online, the world's leading interactive service, and Kmart, is one of the largest giveaways on the Internet to date and introduced more home shoppers to the content-rich, user-friendly environs of REALTOR.COM than ever before. "As much as the Sweepstakes was a fun and entertaining game for REALTOR.COM visitors, it was also an extremely valuable opportunity to attract and introduce new homebuyers to an online resource that undoubtedly improves their home shopping experience," said Dennis Cronk, president-elect of the National Association of Realtors and Virginia real estate broker. "Real estate professionals appreciate the fact that home shoppers are turning to REALTOR.COM in record numbers to give themselves the information and the confidence they need to become better prepared home buyers."

In addition to the grand prize, presenting co-sponsors, Kmart and AOL, gave away an entertainment center and 20 annual AOL memberships. The seven-week sweepstakes game also featured weekly give-aways from well-known home and entertainment brands including GTE, Home Depot, IBM, Procter & Gamble, Service Master, and Whirlpool.