It's hardly a surprise that Cendant is concerned with the quality of online marketing of listings. As an organization with three of the largest, and most prominent brands among franchise brokerage firms, branding is a major selling point to broker and agent affiliates. Leadership is ever vigilant of any situation in which brand image and/or consumer demand could cause third parties or direct competitors to create new service models that divert revenues away from franchisees and their agents.

For examples not mentioned in the white paper, Prudential Real Estate Affiliates recently purchased eRealty for its technologies, which included attractive, navigable and consistent presentations of listings, among the best on the Internet. Other entities, including Realtor.com, also package listings attractively for consumer consumption, which contributes to consumers choosing Realtor.com to begin their home search, often instead of local brokers' sites. Once consumers are on the site, one out of three contacts a Realtor, and eight out of 10 contact the Realtor by phone.

This is a trend that will only increase, as 93 percent of homebuyers are turning to the Internet to look at homes, and 22 percent are seeking neighborhood information, according to the 2003 National Association of Realtors survey of homebuyers and sellers.

Cendant Corporation Real Estate Services Division wants Cendant-brand brokers to be found and chosen on the Internet, and one of the keys to doing that is raising awareness of the importance of attractive listing presentations as part of an affiliate's online marketing strategy.

To that end, the real estate division has created an internally distributed white paper called "The Need For More Effective Online Marketing By Real Estate Professionals."

Realty Times has obtained a copy of the report, and while we do not have permission to reprint the text, as the white paper was written for affiliates, we do have permission to mention highlights.

The paper begins by pointing out that nearly three-fourths of homebuyers begin their search on the Internet, according to the NAR, yet "the industry is plagued with online listings that often appear as static as they were in the late 1990s."

Consumers want more and richer information online - photos, detailed property information and virtual tours - than the industry supplies. Others are "prepared to do a far better job of marketing listings on the Internet..."

Warns the paper, "if left unchanged, the combination of high consumer demand for online information and the lack of supply of such services could be harmful to our business."

Brand Internet sites already provide dynamic marketing platforms, but brokers and agents aren't taking advantage. Many listings have no photos, notes the paper, showing no improvement of service to the consumer from the mid-90s.

Realty Times first published this statistic from Realtor.com - that fewer than 10 percent of Realtor.com listings have more than a single photo, and an unscientific study performed by Realty Times found as many as 25 percent of online listings with no photo at all.

Cendant came to the same dismal finding, and adds that the same poorly presented listing can show up on multiple sites. It's a disconnect between what consumers want and what they get from Realtors online in the presentation of homes.

Real estate is simply falling short of the online presentation standards set by other products such as cars, which are showcased with dozens of photos from all angles. The message Cendant relays is that if a car at an average cost of $26,163 can be marketed so well online, why can't a median priced home at $169,900? Even a condominium for cats, listed on eBay, was marketed with eight photos and a detailed summary for this $79 item.

Striving to explain the urgency of adopting better Internet presentation of listings, Cendant mentions that now 38 percent of home Internet users have broadband access - which means they want to improve the receipt of content from the Internet. And that's everyone from young people to boomers to seniors.

So what do these online searchers want? When they shop for homes, they want photos (78 percent) and detailed property information (77 percent) according to the NAR - exactly what they aren't getting from most online listings.

Whereever affiliates listings appear, says the white paper, "we must strive for all of our respective listings to appear with photos, and lots of them. Anything less than 100 percent of listings with a photo is a disservice to home sellers and a turnoff to potential home buyers."

Our agents, says Cendant, must ask themselves:

• Do my listings distinguish me from the competition online? Do they reflect the attention to detail and level of service I seek to provide my clients?

• What does it say about me or my company that my listings typically have only one static photo?

• Would I be satisfied with this level of service if I were the home seller?

• Would I rather list my home with an agent who takes the time and effort to enhance his or her listings with multiple photos or virtual tours, or one whose listings typically show with just one photo?

• Is this online presentation compelling to me as a home buyer?

• Does the listign description tell me anything special about the home or is it simply a laundry list of details that looks like any other MLS listing?

• Are the elements of this listing so complete that it would motivate me to contact the agent to schedule an appointment to visit the home in person?

• If my client asked me to e-mail him a set of comparable new listings to share with his wife or parents, who well served would I be to fax him an MLS printout with an indiscernable black and white photo?

Predicts Cendant, some day, we'll have satellite views of the property. With increased broadband capacity, full motion video overviews of properties for sale will replace virtual tours. As these innovations become available, real estate practitioners will have to make them available to compete.

But the drive to the future has to start now - with providing what should already be robust presentations to buyers.