Cendant's new mega-site, CompleteHome.com, is less than two months from entering the online home portal ring. With a field of only three other serious contenders for the heavyweight title, who will wear the championship belt?

While its competitors Homestore, Homeadvisor and Homeseekers are busily building their revenue muscles, CompleteHome.com already has plenty of pecs to flex in that area, but bets are on if they are enough to punch a knockout.

Richard Smith, chairman and CEO Cendant real estate division, believes they are. He says, "We have all the components for a robust site -everything you need for buying, selling or renting we control through a managed company or third-party relationships."

Like Homestore, the brands will not be collapsed into the umbrella, declares Smith. "We have the marketing funds to promote the brands as well as the umbrella," he says.

Homestore's strength is its strategic partnerships with marquee name trade associations, but its weakness may be revenue generation to substantiate its stock value. The very partnerships that make the site compelling could be preventing Homestore from capitalizing on a key revenue generator and content builder - loans.

As an arm of Microsoft, HomeAdvisor brings technology solutions to the table for lenders and brokers, but on the retail side, a strong loan center is one of its key strengths. Homeadvisor is capitalizing on the advantage by increasing services to large direct lenders such as Chase Manhattan by licensing its loan platform. Not only does Homeadvisor have this strength as a revenue base, they are providing the same service for brokers for listing/business management.

Without the support of trade associations or the most famous name in technology behind it, Homeseekers may appear to be in the wrong weight class, but it still deserves a place in the bouts. First, it has been a listings aggregator since 1992, and has the clear advantage in the establishment and maintenance of online relationships. It's second only to Realtor.com in number of listings and it is a strategic partner of HomeAdvisor. Add to that the fact that one of its primary revenue sources is an Internet MLS information management product that can run parallel to existing systems or run alone. The advantage is that Homeseekers is poised to deliver online transaction management to its list of broker/Realtor partners faster than any other competitor.

So where does CompleteHome.com weigh in?

For starters, the site will debut as the first of its kind to be operated by a principal instead of a third-party service provider. Cendant has established real estate brands that are the leaders of their categories in a number of ways making CompleteHome a powerful sum of its parts. The brands collectively account for 25-30% of the nation's MLS listings.

According to the company, Cendant is the world's largest franchiser of residential real estate brokerage offices. Cendant's brands include Century 21, ERA, and Coldwell Banker. At 93, Coldwell Banker is among the oldest brokerage firms in the nation. It also was the first franchise organization to embrace the Web, winning awards with such innovations as its Personal Retriever(tm) feature, and it was the first franchise to offer emailed new listings to consumers.

On the relocation side, Cendant Mobility is a global leader in relocation services helping clients in corporate and government relocation domestically and internationally. Its list of clients reads like a who's who of international business.

Cendant Mortgage is already an established leader in mortgage loan originations. In fact, it is the sixth largest lender in the country with over $26 billion in loans. In 1998, Cendant Mortgage did $50 million in online loans. In 1999, the figure will top out at $300 million, or six times as much. Although the 1999 figures represent only one percent of total loan originations for Cendant, the rate of growth shows a powerful shadowbox jab for the future.

With much of its loan business done by phone and through partners such as insurance giant, USAA, shifting the service model to the Web was easy, according to Ted Deutsch, spokesperson for CompleteHome.com.

Rent.Net, one of the most lucrative of Cendant's online holdings and an experienced Internet player since 1994, will serve as the revenue "model home" for CompleteHome. One look at the site reveals a revenue stream that is unstoppable - product and service partnerships that provide a never-ending source of income for the site.

Where Homestore will have to watch out for the uppercut is traffic. RentNet boasts almost as many users than Realtor.com and clocks more traffic than Springstreet, with 3.5 million user sessions in July. And, if there's any question that the site will only appeal to the first-time renter or homebuyer, Cendant has the fast-growing senior market integrated, too, with its SeniorHousing.Net

In 1992, Cendant (then HFS) was the first company to offer ancillary marketing services through its strategic partnerships with home and moving service providers. From a moving van to cable TV installation, Cendant offers discounted services to its real estate customers. Considered controversial when it was first introduced, the practice is now widely accepted and may be counted as the most significant precursor to the "one-stop-shop" business model. From mega-sites to broker sites, the one-stop-shop is being adopted to raise revenues and provide value-added service to consumers.

In the spring of 2000, Cendant will offer a tracking stock to its shareholders for CompleteHome.com and it will also be offered for public trading. Then, the stock market will reevaluate the real estate giant. If earnings are the criteria, then CompleteHome's diversified revenue base should give it a clear advantage. From ecommerce, to banner ads, to relationship based revenues, the site has all its bases covered.

Smith sums it up. "Any comparisons would be apples to oranges. "We are the only real practitioner in the business. The vast majority of services and products that one should offer online, we own and manage."

He also points out that Cendant has a vested interest in the offline world. "Consumers will be prone to doing business with experts. We've been going to (online) school and now it is time to step up to the plate and give our franchisees a competitive place in the marketplace.

"We won't be dependent on third-party relationships."