Looking for seed money of about $2.5 million, the co-founder of Comstock, a six-year veteran Web site and marketing services firm for real estate offices, has announced the formation of Infinity Realty Systems, Inc..

Based in Atlanta, Georgia, the self-funded company will be helmed by John Bayes, president. The new firm will provide customized software and hardware solutions for Real Estate associations and brokers focusing on Internet-based MLS information services.

Bayes is not intimidated by the fact that not only are there already plenty of well-entrenched service providers already in this space, among them VistaInfo. Inc. (formerly Moore Data), Homeseekers, Interealty, and the most formidable of all but yet to be announced - Homestore.

Bayes plans to enter the same arena as Homestore for the same reason. MLSs and therefore agents aren't making the migration to the Internet fast enough. Some are tethered to legacy systems and don't have the capital for a cutover. Others are upgrading older equipment. Bayes plans a state-of-the-art product that adheres to open standards and focuses on ease-of-use, and will beat more sluggish competitors to the punch.

"We believe that the folks in it aren't taking advantage of technologies like wireless," says Bayes. "They have existing products being retrofitted or they are adding features. They are tied to legacy systems and there is no incentive to upgrade legacy systems to today's standards. A company like us has to make its mark taking advantage of wiring, mapping and relationships with other information providers."

How do they plan to take on Homestore? "Wyldfyre has an edge, and I consider them a strong competitor, but they haven't announced that they are going into MLS business," says Bayes. "But I expect them to. I expect to see a lot of consolidation among a lot of boards. We want to provide services that will allow the boards to that and address their needs."

Where Infinity Realty Systems plans to departs from Homestore is that the behemoth typically goes after the largest Realtor and MLS organizations. Bayes plans to start with small to medium-sized organizations. He says software procurement costs will be low and software easy to learn.

Bayes may have a shot. As vice president of research and development for Comstock, Bayes was instrumental in developing several new technologies on the cutting edge of the Internet. Among these were email to fax and email-to-alphanumeric pager gateways. This automated system handled the automatic conversion of incoming agent-email to fax at the rate of approximately 120 faxes per hour. The email-to-pager system was designed in collaboration with AT&T and earned both recognition and high praise from many real estate professionals.

Bayes is also a veteran of the listings wars, having taken on the daunting obstacle course of obtaining property listings from both legacy and state of the art Multiple Listing Systems. "It was a political minefield and a technical challenge due to the rapidly changing landscape in the real estate industry," recalls Bayes.

While working with Comstock, Bayes learned a tremendous amount about the real estate industry and more specifically about the software and systems which were being used by Realtors. It appeared obvious to him that there was much more that could be done for Realtors with respect to the information systems in use at that time, among them an Internet communication infrastructure with potential for interstate collaboration on sales, cost savings to local Real Estate Boards. Today in many rural areas, there are many MLS systems that are still using pad, pencil and fax machines as the only means of a conveying listing information among offices.

Although statistics are lacking, Both Bayes and Homestore officials see a direct correlation between wireless services and MLS information. "We see a lot of requests, and are often asked to provide solutions for Realtors who would like to access their listings via hand-held devices, windows CE, and Web-enabled cell phones," says Bayes.

Infinity Realty System Version 7 will be launched third quarter 2000. "The basis comes from existing system which has been rebuilt from the ground up," explains Bayes. " In order to compete, we intend to use some new technologies not being used widely, including wireless and mapping."

"Our primary distribution model will be licensing to Realtor associations and large brokerage firms," says Bayes. "Additionally, we plan to leverage our partnerships to establish cooperative marketing and research and development initiatives."

Where does Comstock Net Services fit in? Will there be a relationship between the new MLS services provider and the supplier of Web services to over 500 companies and 20,000 agents?

"Comstock's services are for offices and agents, but they are not the intended target for Infinity Realty Systems," says Bayes. "Many of those customers will have some influence with their brokers and boards and we'll take advantage of any opportunity that comes our way because of our existing customer base."

Published: July 11, 2000

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