Fidelity National Financial announced the launch of the first major Web site dedicated to marketing bank-owned properties at its third annual conference, held this past weekend in Keystone Resort, Colorado.

BuyBankHomes.com opens with 7,000 real estate-owned (REO) listings and is expected to have over 25,000 by the end of the year, thanks to Fidelity subsidiary Fidelity National Asset Management Solutions' (FNAMS) relationships with 22 lenders, and thousands of REO brokers and salespersons with relationships to other lenders.

Fidelity and FNAMs expect BuyBankHomes.com be a premier marketplace for sellers (banks and others) and real estate agents to advertise REO properties for sale. Its timing couldn't be better, according to BuyBankHomes.com consultant Julie Brosterman.

"eBay has decided to exit foreclosures by mid-September," explains Brosterman. "The pricing and marketplace wasn't their core proficiency. eBay will still offer real estate Web services but they won't have services for foreclosed properties."

At its busiest, eBay never had more than 3,100 REO properties for sale, notes Brosterman, yet had over 55,000 real estate agents registered, suggesting that agents are looking for leads and will turn to BuyBankHomes.com to get them. Buyer leads will be available to agent members at referral fees of half of one percent.

In addition, other competing portals such as Yahoo! and MSN, which have searches for foreclosed properties, get their data from RealtyTrac, which is less consumer-friendly than BuyBankHomes.com intends to be.

"The data comes from the recorder's offices," explains Brosterman, "so it isn't refined in terms of property data, characteristics, contact information or even if the property is available for sale. Their business model is to sell the data by subscription to the investor or consumer, which is challenging for the buyers because the quality of data is confusing."

All of these factors, including some new large banking relationships, make the timing to debut a new portal specializing in foreclosed properties fortuitous, suggests the company.

In contrast to competitors, BuyBankHomes.com will have listings with much more complete information designed to please both the bargain-hunting consumer and investor who buys bulk properties, says Tom DiMercurio, president of FNAMS.

"We are excited about the product," says DiMercurio, "It addresses all segments of the market in a way that REO properties haven't before. There will be marketing tools in addition to toolkits for agents for sellers who are not members of BuyBankHomes.com. They will want their properties on there so there will be breadth of inventory, and if the agent is interested, he or she can get buyer leads. The site will provide buyer leads and have tools that will alert them when an REO listing becomes available. They will get an e-mail so if a buyer contacts them about a property they can look in the area and see other REO listings in the area."

Why this is unique is because of the superior consumer-friendly presentation of the listings, explains Brosterman, coupled with the marketing and transaction management tools and other technology tools provided by Fidelity to its customers.

"For the first time, consumers will be able to see a completed foreclosure available for sale," says Brosterman.

BuyBankHomes.com has four business models in the consumer/buyer, seller, bulk investor, and agent categories.

"FNAMS will act as a facilitator," says DiMercurio, "That is big. Nobody does that. It is the most difficult thing to find the seller, and if you can aggregate them on similar characteristics, property sizes and types of units, then you have done a lot of sorting which is hard for the individual investor to do. That gives lift to sellers.

"The final model," he explains, "is that given all the contacts that Fidelity has with foreclosure professionals, the site will sell by subscription the notice of trustee sales, and the information for consumers who want to chase that data and bid on the county courthouse steps. They'll know when they can open the bid, and when the property reverted to the seller, and we will keep them alerted on all that. That will be launched early next year, and we have a lot of interest of sellers of REO properties. The sellers get a lot of phone calls, and now all that information is on the site."

DiMercurio says that the site is going to use a variety of sources to attract foreclosure consumers, including considering RealtyTrac as a partner.

"One thing we can do for repeat buyers," says DiMercurio, "we will have BuyBankHomes.com with all our title companies and they will have first-hand information. I think most sellers have agent databases that exceed 50,000 agents, and we converted about 35 percent of the attendees to our conference to sign up on the agent module."

The conference had 1144 registrations of mostly REO brokers and salespeople, nearly double the attendance of last year.