A Palm Coast, Fla. Realtor beat out more than 12,000 real estate agents for the chance to slide behind the wheel of a brand new Porsche and claim it as his own, thanks to a sleek giveaway from Oklahoma City, Okla.-based a la mode, inc.

Nathan Gilliam, real estate broker and owner of Resident Real Estate Network, said it took about 15 minutes of convincing when a la mode executive Rusty Lindquist phoned him to congratulate him on his win.

"I'm usually not a gullible person," Gilliam told MortgageDaily.com. "I had gotten the website and entered the contest -- it took about ten seconds -- and then forgot about it."

A week and a half after the call from Lindquist he had possession of the 2006 GT Silver Metallic Porsche Boxster convertible with stone-gray interior.

Gilliam, 31, said he recently purchased an Xsite website from a la mode because they offer customized websites tailored to the real estate industry saving him time and money by letting them do the technical work while he utilized his time selling real estate and working on an upcoming Intranet service project.

Having worked as a technology consultant and project manager for seven years, Gilliam said he relocated from Manhattan to Palm Coast four years ago and merged his tech-savvy background with a new career in real estate.

"I could see the direction in which real estate was moving," he said. "The real estate industry is very conducive to having technology applied to it. I was able to leverage my technical background to help us move forward."

Currently, Gilliam is working on an Intranet service that would offer homeowner's associations and gated communities, as well as others, the chance to use a private website as a source of community information with local news, calendars; and as a way for neighbors to get to know one another, he said.

Published: December 6, 2005

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