While the management team of Homes & Land Publishing would like to forget that Homes.com ever existed, they are prepared to rebuild with a new Web site that promises and delivers the value proposition to associate publishers and their advertisers that they didn't get with Homes.com.

For a while, Homes & Land's Bob Prince lost his compass. Attempting to take the company's Web site Homes.com public, he alienated many of his core customers, franchisees known as associate publishers (APs.) Presented as a value proposition to help cement franchise sales in more territories in 1992, Homes.com was one of the first listings portals on the Internet, and had every opportunity to dominate the marketplace. But IPO-hungry management eventually learned the folly of ignoring the needs of APs and their advertisers.

Some APs were bitter that they weren't included in the IPO bonanza, and they complained that Homes.com was actually competing against them for their own customers. The situation worsened over royalty disputes and a Chapter 11 bankruptcy action. Meanwhile franchise sales and profitability suffered. Homes & Land was quickly reaching a crisis.

As Homes.com sank, unable to get additional financing to continue, Prince was asked to step down as CEO of Homes.com. Then his management team at Homes and Land say that they declared a separation from the sinking, debt-ridden dot-com, and announced that a new Web site would be built for the APs.

A public relations ruse? The announcement neatly headed off further disputes with top-producing APs. It also warned Homes.com debtors in a subtle way that the parent company would stand behind Prince's separation of Homes.com into a stand-alone corporation and that it would not abe accountable for Homes.com debts. But to accomplish both objectives, the management had to do something to get the APs back on the team. What better way to than to give the APs a value proposition in a Homes & Land Web site that would help drive more traffic to their advertisers.

But there was one hurdle left. While Homes & Land can publicly distance itself from Homes.com, it can't separate itself from its own principal, Prince, or from the distasteful association with a company that has left employees and other creditors clamoring for their money.

And that means that the company has a lot of trust to rebuild, not only to skeptical APs, but to their real estate agent advertisers, many of whom were sold Homes.com products such as PREP software that some users claim was unsatisfactory.

According to vice president of operations, Brian Delaney, Prince is keeping a low profile to help management rebuild. While some APs have yet to be won over by Prince's newfound desire to please, Delaney says he can be patient. He says he's willing to let the new Web site speak for management's intentions.

Staffed with some of the remaining customer service and development team from Homes.com, Homesandland.com has launched with the intention of driving the same traffic to real estate agent advertisers that it once did to Homes.com. Gone are the dreams of IPOs. Today the dream is just being able to serve APs and real estate agents with the value proposition that they feel they should have had in the first place.

In this exclusive Agent News interview, Delaney unflinchingly ran a gauntlet of tough questions concerning how he and the rest of management is going to restore the trust of the APs and their real estate advertisers.

B.E.: How are you planning to spin Homesandland.com as being better or different from Homes.com?

B.D.: I think it goes back to the reason that we disassociated ourselves from Homes.com. While Homes & Land gave birth to Homes.com, the needs of our associate publishers and their advertisers (the real estate agents and ancillary service providers) were no longer being met. Homes & Land had started to become a much smaller part of what Homes.com was offering, and we felt the need to have a site that was specific to our associate publishers and their advertisers. That is what will differentiate us in the marketplace. We are not necessarily trying to be Realtor.com, or Homes.com. We will never be a site with a million properties on the site but that is not what we are gearing this towards.

B.E.: How are you going to do that?

B.D.: When you go to search on a region, you will see that each of the associate publishers will have a specific URL that goes to their magazines. We have done that because of the research and past knowledge that real estate is a local business and we want the APs to offer the kind of information that will be useful to Realtors in their local market. Each AP will have control over that URL that represents their magazine. Another thing that will separate us from our competitors is that our data comes from our magazines, therefore every listing will have a photo, and we will be able to avoid stale data.

B.E.: Will that be enough to win over the APs?

B.D.: It is important to remember that our APs were bitten by Homes.com and we want to make sure that homesandland is the kind of product they will never feel threatened by.

B.E.: What happened to Bob Prince?

B.D.: He is not involved in the day-to-day management of the company. I'm sure he attends board meetings, but it is the board and CEO Francie Lowe who is in charge of the day-to-day operations.

I'm VP of operations and spend all my days with APs, and I've had very little interaction with Bob and the reason I haven't is when Bob went off to do Homes.com, he needed people who were experts in franchising to run Homes and Land, and that's where I came in.

B.E.: But he owns it. How does that go over with the APs?

B.D.: Bob has got the message. He sent our APs a letter about a month ago that he had no intention of coming back and having any input into HomesandLand.com. He has faith in the senior management team that has run this company for the last few years.

Homes.com got to where it was because of the 60 million magazine covers per year that we published promoting it, and that drove traffic to Homes.com. We are going to be able to the same thing with Homesandland.com.

B.E.: What about the real estate agents? Will they be confused between Homes.com and Homesandland.com?

B.D.: Our customers who purchased products from Homes.com are still using them as a company they do business with. We aren't encouraging them not to do business with them. We haven't ventured into the agent Web site business, but the agents who advertise with us will have resume pages which can provide a link to their Web site. Most agents have several Web site solutions as you know and that is one of the things we are looking at. Do we want to get into providing agent Web sites? It's not our primary business. And our whole focus now is on our core business at Homes & Land.

B.E.: So are the APs saying bravo?

B.D.: They are looking at it with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. To the extent that we can drive more inquiries to their advertisers through homesandland.com, I think at that point the APs will embrace Homesandland.com more each day.

We are still getting the APs on board, and a lot contributed to the site in helping us develop it the way they wanted. Some are taking a wait and see approach, and at this point I'm not surprised or bothered by it.

If I'm open and honest with them, then I have no problems. They can take tough news as long as it is the truth.

B.E.: So what is the value added proposition for real estate agents?

B.D.: Listings on the site are free if an agent is an advertiser. Their resume page is their lead generator. All we feel we need to do is drive inquiries to the agent, and if we can show them they are getting inquiries, we have done our job.

B.E.: So this is at no additional cost to the APs or their agent advertisers?

B.D.: This is a labor of love - in the publishing industry, you have to be able to give value adds. And what better way to do that than to expose them on the Web.

B.E.: How do you think you will survive?

B.D.: Sometimes people discount the importance of personal relationships. The APs work hard in a very demanding industry and it is the personal relationshiops that they have built with their advertisers that has made this magazine what it is today.