Homes.com, like every other major real estate portal, is turning its attention to the value of the individual real estate agent. The Internet's largest online magazine-based real estate portal is offering a slew of new products and incentives to attract agents and their listings to its Internet brand, Homes.com, including an initiative called AgentDirect.

Free Web Sites

AgentDirect is designed to help agents make the transition to Web marketing with ease and give real estate agents direct access to home buyers and sellers on the Internet. AgentDirect features a unique URL, which includes the agent's name alongside Homes.com - " agentname.homes.com." This allows agents to maintain their listing inventory online, with a personalized home page and the ability to obtain and manage qualified consumer leads. The AgentDirect Web sites are fully integrated with the Homes.com consumer Web site.

Bob Prince, president and CEO of Homes.com said, "AgentDirect allows agents to establish a personalized presence on the Web and reach a new breed of Web-savvy consumers. It gives real estate agents a powerful way to generate new business, with tools that require no programming or previous Web experience."

According to the company, Homes.com has already launched AgentDirect Web sites for more than 35,000 agents throughout the US, and offers online activation of new sites via agentdirect.homes.com.The AgentDirect product follows other services for individual agents, such as MyPersonalBrand.com, a virtual office solution and Preferred Pages 2.0, an enterprise web solution targeted toward brokers.

Broker Solutions

Preferred Pages 2.0 offers push-button commands enable brokers to generate fully realized web sites in real time to meet the needs of rapidly growing businesses. Whether a realty firm has a single office with twenty agents or dozens of offices with thousands of agents, Preferred Pages 2.0 will automatically create unique, fully customizable web sites for every agent and office of the company.

Mobile Information Management

To sweeten the pot for the tech-centric agent, Homes.com is teaming with AvantGo, Inc., a leading authority in managing mobile information, to bring the Homes.com Web portal to users of handheld devices throughout the country. Called Homes.com ToGo!, the Homes.com application and real estate channel will work on all Palm Computing devices, including the Palm III, IIIe, IIIx, V, Vx, and VII, other Palm computing platforms like the Handspring Visor, and Windows CE-based handheld devices.

The company is developing application channels for use by home buying and selling consumers and by the real estate professionals who serve them. Users will be able to transfer property searches to their hand-held devices, or enter a search and get the results during their next sync operation, including photos, maps, and text descriptions. Daily mortgage rates will be updated with every sync, as will the latest real estate news, weather, and more. This information is then available in the palm of their hand, whether they’re at home, in the office, or on the road.

The timing for this initiative is perfect. Handheld devices, including 3Com’s Palm Organizers and various Windows CE-based devices, continue to grow in popularity and use, with some estimates placing the number of users at 25 million by the year 2002.

Explains Prince, "Technology is fundamentally changing the way consumers, agents, and brokers approach real estate, and Homes.com is committed to being an agent for positive change."

Published: November 12, 1999

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