In California, your friendly neighborhood real estate agent is also often somewhat of a computer geek, and that's a good thing.

Tech savvy consumers shouldn't have a hard time finding a real estate agent with a computer skills set to match their own.

With nearly one quarter of the state's residential real estate business generated on the Internet and 56 percent of all buyers using the Internet as an integral part of their home buying process, it stands to reason most of the state's agents have their own Web site, otherwise use the Internet as a marketing tool, use broadband Net access at home to keep up and are tech savvy enough to have avoided computer viruses.

"Realtors continue to be more technologically savvy than their counterparts in years past, and have integrated numerous technological tools into their day-to-day businesses as well as real estate transactions," said California Association of Realtors (CAR) president Ann Pettijohn.

"Use of the Internet and Internet marketing has increased, as Realtors respond to meeting the needs of today's tech-savvy home buyers and sellers," she added.

Oct. 5 was Tech Tuesday at California Realtor Expo 2004 in Santa Clara, CA when CAR released California's 2004 Realtor Use of Technology Survey which tracked behavioral changes in real estate agents' use of technology, as well as adoption rates of hardware, software and Internet connectivity.

The survey was also conducted to determine real estate agents' technology proficiency -- or geek quotient -- and their incorporation of technology in real estate practices.

Home buyers who make heavy use of the Internet are more likely to be younger, have larger incomes, spend more on homes and take less of a real estate agent's time in finding a home than buyers who use the Internet casually, CAR has also found.

"If you don't use technology, you will be left in the dust," says Diane Bogart, a real estate agent with Coldwell Banker in Los Gatos. To keep from falling into the digital divide, Bogart uses her Web site to promote listings with virtual home tours. She keeps her buyers updated via electronic newsletters that direct them to her Web site for the latest listings. Through RealtyTimes.com's Real Estate Update newsletter, she keeps buyers and sellers informed about the latest market conditions, buying and selling tips, home improvement, finance and credit issues and a host of other related topics. CAR also says buyers who surf the Web are more satisfied with their real estate agent than those who just mouse around. Expanding by gigabytes every year, the more lucrative market segment of more satisfied customers is enough to make any real estate agent run out and upgrade.

"The Internet is my office," says Robert Aldana, a prototypical gadget-laden real estate and mortgage consultant. Mr. Aldana also hosts a community cable channel television show for real estate consumers and posts his Web address, not his physical office address on his business card.

"The Internet has helped me become much more efficient and streamline my transactions. It allows you to reach more people in less time and it truly gives the client more information, faster," says Aldana.

CAR's survey found:

• All agents have at least one desktop or laptop computer which is used more at home than ever before.

• The top business uses of the Internet for real estate agents include email (92 percent), multiple listing service access (91 percent), and checking listings online (83 percent).

• 82 percent of real estate agents have high-speed Internet connection with 54 percent favoring cable and 28 percent opting for a digital subscriber line (DSL). Fewer than 1 percent are still dialing up Internet access.

• 82 percent use email to update clients on new listings.

• 71 percent of all real estate agents avoided virus attacks last year.

• 70 percent use the Internet for marketing or farming (up from only 10 percent last year).

• 53 percent have a personal Web site (up from 41 percent last year).

• 56 percent of real estate offices offer technological support to their agents.

• 45 percent of real estate agents agreed that their client expects to be updated via the Internet.

Published: October 14, 2004

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Broderick Perkins parlayed a career in old-school journalism into a contemporary digital news service that really hits home. The award-winning consumer journalist, originally from Wilmington, DE, is founder, publisher and executive editor of the bootstrap DeadlineNews Group, a Silicon Valley-based editorial content and consulting service specializing in residential real estate, consumer news and related editorial consulting services. The DeadlineNews Group includes the website, DeadlineNews.com, offering real estate editorial content and consulting services, and its back shop, the Deadline Newsroom, an open house on news that really hits home. Perkins obtained his formal journalism education from University of Delaware and a journalism boot camp, the Institute of Journalism Education at the University of California-Berkeley. He went on to 20 years of service as a daily newspaper journalist at the Wilmington, DE News Journal and San Jose, CA Mercury News. Perkins covered housing on the San Jose Mercury News reporting team which earned a General News Reporting Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. He has also produced real estate, consumer and small business content for the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, RealtyTimes.com, Nolo.com, Better Homes and Gardens, the National Association of Realtors, Homestore/Move and Intuit/Quicken among more than three dozen publications. In addition to managing the DeadlineNews Group, Perkins most recently served as chief editorial consultant for Nolo's Essential Guide To Buying Your First Home, Nolo, and writes real estate television scripts for RealtyTimes.com.