I was really excited to hear that Yahoo! Internet Life would be repeating its "Buying a Home Online" feature as an annual event. I knew from reading his other work that feature writer Alan Cohen, would try to do the category justice. For a guy that has to cover the entire Web, Cohen does a good job of getting a quick handle on deep categories like shopping for homes and cars, or getting help with the stock market or health issues, any of which could be career niches in journalism.

I just wish the magazine had given him more of a free hand with this particular category. For a personal finance topic which impacts about one fifth of the nation's gross national product, and one in which more than 50 percent of home buyers are seeking information on the Internet, online home buying deserves more than three crammed pages.

But Yahoo! Internet Life is a have-fun-with-sites magazine, not Consumer Reports. With the space he has, Cohen crams in plenty of data, including nine Gold Star winners, a report card on the home buying hubs, and a side-bar on building a home.

Winners include:

• Best Overall - HomeAdvisor.com
• Best Home-Selling Hub - Owners.com
• Best Home-Building Hub - Homebuilder.com
• Best Relocation Help - Monstermoving.com
• Best Wireless Listings - Homes.com
• Best Apartment Rentals - Springstreet.com
• Best Legal Resources - Nolo.com
• Best Agent Finder - Homegain.com
• Best Virtual Tours - None

Cohen hits the high spots, noting that listings dominance doesn't mean nationwide dominance. He praises HomeAdvisor for its "unbeatable" interface, and features such as price-checking, mapping and tutorials. Springstreet gets the nod for most listings, many enhanced with photos, and its renter-friendly content such as renting with pets. The list goes on with more of the same.

Some criteria was a little confusing. While complimenting Owners.com for enabling consumers to unload their agents and find a home at the same time, Cohen awards HomeGain as the Best Agent Finder. So is it better to avoid an agent or find one? That's a question worth exploring for readers, particularly with winners on both sides of the fence. Cohen notes that Owners.com supplies listings to Yahoo! Real Estate, (so do Homes.com and Homebuilder, but Springstreet and HomeAdvisor do not.) Homegain is also a featured resource on the site.

But what's left out is as interesting as what made the content cut. Aren't there some preliminary things that homebuyers do on the Internet like check their credit? Play with their financial scenarios? Don't homebuyers usually need loans? Next year, I hope space allows for consideration of a "Best Loan Information Resource" category.

It also would have been fun to see how the winners in each category compared to their unnamed competitors. Which sites were they, and could those have second and third place ratings?

Other tantalizing omissions include the answers to questions raised by Cohen himself. Why are there so few homes on some sites in some areas? Why aren't there more virtual tours on more homes? Oops, we're getting into politics, there, but these are questions that could be answered very well in a "Best MLS," or "Best Listing Presentation" category. I can guarantee that this is a category that would do more to galvanize the listings sites into improving their lack of photos, fresh data, virtual tours, navigation and other points. It would also embarrass those organizations that stand in the way of helping agents help the appearance and features of their listings on the Internet.

Perhaps MLSs, brokers and agents could be incentified to send photos and complete homebuying information with every listing. Most of the homebuying sites are already paying for listings now, why not pay only for complete listings? That will light a fire under a few people.

Right now sites pride themselves on such investor-pleasing criteria as stickiness and page views, which is prized over getting to information quickly. And that's exactly why Internet boredom is setting in, with user sessions beginning to drop, reports the Industry Standard. And don't count on Internet user sessions getting longer at home. Only 5 percent of households have broadband, said a November Congressional Service Report, and that is thanks to the poor deployment of broadband services by local phone companies. Nobody has time to surf homes from home; homebuyers have to wait til they get to work and use the boss' T1 line. Time is of the essence. Get them to those homes and quickly! And, the more information that is crammed on the homes at one viewing (minimize the clickthroughs to maps and other reports, please) the better. How about a shopping list of homes that can be emailed for later detailed viewing?

One question Cohen doesn't raise is "will shopping for a home online result in a better buying experience?" This is something every ASP designer, listing service and Realtor would dearly love to know the answer. So far, homebuyers are increasing their use of the Web, but are they enjoying what they are finding? Is it fun to click on homes? Is it disappointing when they don't have addresses and photos? Will consumers gravitate to sites which consistently have these enhancements on their listings?

That's why Best lists of this kind interest me and why they should interest you whether you are a broker, agent, an MLS executive, a listing service officer, or applications designer/executive. Anyone with an interest in helping sell homes can get a lot of clues from lists like this as to where the next first mover advantage is.

Brokers and agents, do you want to be the only broker on the page without photos of your listings which you told the seller you would be promoting on the Internet? Of course not, but I'll bet your competitors are picking up on it and showing your incomplete listings in their listings presentations in order to get the listing.

MLSs, do you actively work to enable your members to get their listings to the Internet as quickly as possible? Or do you have a few rules that are overdue for an overhaul, such as the one that allows agents up to 10 days to post listings, favoring pocket listings by large brokers? Is your area the part of town with the worst-looking listings no matter which listings sites they are displayed? Wonder what would happen if word got around the Internet? I doubt the NAR would like it, they are committed to getting Realtors on the Internet and buying Internet tools. Do you want to be identified as the MLS that holds agents back?

Listing portals, do you want to be the listing service with the worst visual presentation of listings? That's a sure road to the dot-com deadpool. In markets where buyers have a choice, don't you want to be the site they earmark? Are you enabling ASPs to enhance listing quality, or are you holding back for personal gain?

But these are issues that the industry should take care of before a writer like Cohen brings it to national attention.

Interestingly, only one of the homebuying sites made Cohen's list of the Best of the Web, which he just did for ZDNet's PC Magazine, and it only loosely qualifies as a homebuying site - Nolo.com. The Top 100 were rated for a favorite site, design, security, performance and usability.

I guess you could take that to mean that homebuying sites still have a way to go.