A former real estate broker and Web entrepreneur in San Diego has developed
an Internet tool with a very human purpose - to collect feedback from home
buyers and their agents on the houses they've seen, and distribute that
information back to sellers and listing agents.
The Web site is homefeedback.com. The cost to a listing agent to put a
home on the site is $6 per month and $4 per listing.
The site is the brainchild of CEO Rick Bengson, who spent 15 years as a real
estate sales agent and found himself often frustrated by the limited amount
of feedback he'd receive from other agents showing his listings.
"In the current process, the listing agent has to try to call back every
agent who has shown the house trying to get feedback," he said. "But those
(buyer agents) have no incentive to return those calls.
"What you end up doing is going back to your seller and, if you're honest,
explaining that you can't get your phone calls returned. But the seller is
still going to blame the agent for not doing his job."
The feedback site attempts to change that with a carrot and stick approach.
Showing agents who provide information are given high ratings that are
published on the system. Agents who don't respond are given low ratings.
"In a normal situation, you might get 20 percent of agents to give you
feedback," Bengson said. "We're getting around 50 percent, so it's clear the
system works."
The homefeedback system is simple and fairly straightforward.
When agents tour a home, they leave their business cards at a central
location. The listing agent then collects those cards -- which hopefully
include e-mail addresses -- and sends those e-mail address to homefeedback.com.
The Web site then sends a multi-point questionnaire to the showing agent,
asking basic questions:
Is the home priced right?
Is the interior attractive?
Are there problems with the exterior?
Several other points also are covered.
Showing agents are asked to mark the e-form.
"It takes about 30 seconds," says Bengson - and e-mail it back to the system. Results are automatically
tabulated and provided both to the listing agent and the seller, along with
information on how often the house has been shown.
Bengson said current plans are to keep the system only available to licensed
real estate agents. FSBOs are not currently allowed on the system.
Although the system is only three weeks old, homefeedback already has more
than 250 subscribers.
Bengson is confident about the future of his company, but also concedes that
his technology might be more suited to being a feature provided by other
sites.
"We will license the technology to larger (listing site), or maybe even sell
the technology," he said. "Nothing is impossible right now."
Published: December 12, 2000
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