House Hunts by Computer Saving Time and Tedium

“I want this one!” Three-year-old Evan Donnelly is pointing to the color photograph of a tile-roofed house on his parents’ computer screen.

“No, this house is too small, I can tell,” said Mary Donnelly, sitting with her son in their Yorba Linda bedroom. “Go to the next one,” she tells her husband, Brian.

With a click of the mouse, the computer brings up another listed property that matches the family’s preferences. The routine is a familiar one for the Donnellys. They’ve been spending evenings shopping for their dream house--without ever leaving home.

The Donnellys “visit” properties after work via computer. By using a CD-ROM program, they say, they have found a way to eliminate some of the tedium, frustration and stress of house-hunting. There’s no need to drive through unfamiliar neighborhoods on weekends.

“With two children, looking for a home can be an exhausting process,” Mary Donnelly said. “This makes it easy.”

The Donnellys aren’t alone in turning to computers for house-shopping help.

When more than 17,000 real estate brokers gathered in Anaheim last month for their annual national conference, the group focused on how to give clients more electronically packaged information. Computers anchored almost every booth as the brokers gathered to buzz about the latest high-tech marketing tools.

The reason: Most agents have come to realize that colorful yard signs, open houses and a smiling realtor are no longer the best ways to sell residential property.

Real estate agents in the San Fernando Valley and Orange County are among the first in the nation to use on-line systems that tap sophisticated data sources. And, as major real estate companies rush toward the information superhighway, brokers still using outdated methods could be left rolling behind in the dirt like lost hubcaps.

Sales agents are betting that, like the Donnellys, their clients will demand more and better information before they begin shopping for a home. Though some brokers are nervous about giving up some control, most predict that shoppers one day will work only with brokers who provide the most complete and current information.

“The floodgates are about to open,” said Mark Surfas, director of on-line communications at Coldwell Banker Residential Real Estate in Mission Viejo, one of the nation’s largest real estate brokerages. “We’re blending a lot of different technologies together and turning this into a real estate information Disneyland.”

These days, shoppers can select their next dwelling at computer kiosks in seven California malls. A kiosk is slated to be installed in the Glendale Galleria and five other malls next year. Computers have replaced model homes in Aliso Viejo. Prospective buyers instead look at computerized images of home designs developed by two Orange County companies.

And, for the ultimate home-buying experience, consumers may one day use virtual reality centers--with computer-generated, three-dimensional house designs--to “walk through” rooms in houses or even entire neighborhoods without ever going outdoors.

While on-line networks are not yet available in most of Southern California, the San Fernando Valley Assn. of Realtors has unveiled a system that lets buyers use a computer network to choose a dwelling to buy, electronically fill out escrow and title forms and get preliminary approval of a mortgage loan in a single visit.

“They are the only board in the country doing this . . .,” said Almon R. Smith, executive vice president of National Assn. of Realtors, which is developing a nationwide system based on the Valley model.

“It is sweeping the entire industry. When you get down to it, real estate--more than anything else--is about the flow of information. Everyone’s trying to figure out how to link things together.”

With 7,500 members, the San Fernando board is the nation’s third largest real estate board and the largest in California. It is the first to offer its members a network that stores up to 10 color photographs of each listing with full descriptions of each house, recent improvements and information on schools in the area.

The Pacific Bell-designed system can also screen and select listings to fit a buyer’s specifications and print out maps showing the location of each address.

At a Century 21 office just up the street from the Meadows apartment complex in Northridge, where 16 tenants died in the Jan. 17 earthquake, Lisa and Bill Smith are shopping for their “first real home.”

The couple’s condo was damaged in the earthquake, but neither is willing to give up on the Northridge area. Both admitted, though, that neighborhoods littered with earthquake-damaged houses add a special challenge to home buying.

“You can see right here, the chimney is gone,” said their realty agent, Marc D. Schwartz, pointing to one house shown on the screen.

Schwartz plugs into the computer the Smiths’ specifications--three bedrooms, maximum price of $160,000, favorite neighborhoods--and pulls up 75 properties. The Smiths quickly scan the photos on the screen and discard the undesirables, especially those with serious earthquake damage.

“She wants a big house, and I want a big garage,” said Bill Smith, 30, who owns a window cleaning company. “This saves us so much time because we discuss it right here.”

At the Mission Viejo Mall, a computer kiosk designed by New Home Search offers photos and floor plans of listed homes. Using CD-ROM technology, buyers can tour both new and resale properties just by touching a computer screen.

“Looking for a home is a grueling process,” said John Giamo, head of Visual Listings Inc. in Brea, who joined Jeff Meyers of the Meyers Group, a Newport Beach real estate data company, to create New Home Search in 1991.

Visual Listings also produces a real estate CD-ROM packed with up to 25,000 listings. The Donnellys are among a test-marketing group of about 30 clients who receive the disc free at home each week, and about 100 brokerages subscribe to the CD-ROM service for $35 a disc. The company charges brokers about $20 to place a listing for a resale home in the database; it charges builders $150 to list new houses.

Critics of the service say the cost of manufacturing a CD-ROM is prohibitive (the company says a disc costs about $6 now, and could get cheaper). They point out that listings can expire quickly. Giamo admits that the program is still developing, but said computer users will be able to get the listings on the Internet by spring.

Giamo said the system developed in the San Fernando Valley is tailored to brokers’ needs, not those of consumers. His system, he said, is designed specifically for buyers. And that, he says, makes Orange County realtors a little nervous.

“It’s been a very frustrating situation with Orange County brokers; they have not embraced the technology, but consumers love it,” Giamo said.

Chuck Smith, executive vice president of the East Orange County Assn. of Realtors--which has 2,100 members in Santa Ana, Orange, Anaheim Hills and Tustin--acknowledged a certain resistance to change. But his group’s agents can now put listings on the Prodigy on-line service, and he said he believes that eventually, all brokers will be on line.

“We have been looking at similar things to what San Fernando Valley has done. We find our members are very receptive to some of the high-tech innovations,” Smith said. “But there is always some resistance to anything new.”

The Internet, a global connection of computer networks and databases, will help provide a more intimate setting in which to shop for a house. Offers and listings are already appearing on the World Wide Web, a subdivision of the Internet where members can advertise. The system allows for text to be combined with sound and even video, providing an opportunity to show many features of a home.

Coldwell Banker Residential Real Estate and Century 21 Real Estate Corp.--are spending millions of dollars to get their hundreds of thousands of brokers wired with the latest high-tech sales gadgets.

Coldwell Banker is expanding its fledgling Scoop software program so that by early next year, consumers can walk into a Coldwell Banker office to look at pictures of homes, check out schools and shop for a mortgage loan on the computer.

Prudential Real Estate Affiliates of Costa Mesa is building a $1-million center on the East Coast with interactive television to view homes--virtual reality centers where potential buyers will “walk” through dozens of homes without leaving the office.

The only thing missing is the sales agent.

“There will be no salespeople there--but you can find out about everything: homes for sale, mortgages and escrows,” Prudential spokesman Ron Tepper said. “The real estate transaction is the most barbaric thing there is. We want to change that and give consumers what they want.”

Not all brokers embrace the idea of multimedia house-hunting. Realtors, through their local boards, are used to controlling the information on listed properties and don’t like the idea of direct customer access.

“This is still a lot of electronic sizzle,” said Dick Rafferty, a broker with Electronic Realty Associates in Fountain Valley. “People don’t buy homes off the computer. They have to go look at it.”

And many realtors said that although the computers can supply customers with the most up-to-date information, many buyers will still need a professional real estate broker to guide them through purchasing the house of their choice.