Sellers of Luxury Properties Find a Home (Page) on the Internet
A 100-acre country ranch in Malibu selling for $9.7 million sounds appealing. So, too, does a French Polynesian island and resort, priced at $22 million. All the prospective property buyer needs is a little time to check out both sites before making a serious commitment.
Fifteen minutes should do the trick.
The two properties are among the $200-million inventory currently listed on the Estate Properties Premier Marketing Network Web site--a source for information on homes and property priced at a minimum of $850,000 or in the top 10% of a given market.
Estate Properties, which offers scrolling text, chamber music, audio narration and panoramic virtual estate tours for many of its listings, is owned by PropertyNET of Ventura.
The company has five partners--a combination of Internet, real estate, film production and marketing professionals--three of whom also operate the Internet service provider Goldenwave. PropertyNET formed a technological alliance with Net Concept, another Ventura-based Internet service provider, to establish the Estate Properties Web site.
“We’re like ‘Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous’ on the Internet,” said George Tidd, a partner in PropertyNET, which was founded last February.
“There are a lot of real estate Web sites like listinglink, CyberHomes, and each of the respective real estate agents have their own,” Tidd said. “But all those sites have listings from apartments up to some estates. They don’t preview just estates.”
PropertyNET charges property sellers $29.95 to $69 per listing per month, depending on how many bells and whistles are desired.
Tidd said he and his partners knew they had found a niche when extensive Internet searches for sites devoted entirely to upscale homes came up empty.
PropertyNET subsequently acquired the rights to about two dozen strategic domain names and 14 keywords on the Yahoo directory. Banner advertisements for Estate Properties can be found under such keywords as “premier homes,” “luxury homes” “realestate,” “Coldwell banker,” “Coldwell previews” and “Century 21.”
“We’re dealing with a whole different type of clientele--CFOs, CEOs, movie stars--it’s a high-end marketplace,” Tidd said. “There are many [multimillion-dollar] homes on the market. Just think of Montecito, Ojai or the beachfront properties of Silver Strand and Hollywood Beach. These are $1 million-plus. This is a good way to get the exposure to the people who like to purchase these types of homes.”
Officials at PropertyNET, however, expect to go well beyond the Southern California market.
“We plan to go nationwide, global,” Tidd said. “Soon you will be able to see castles, resorts and other islands on our site.”
The Estate Properties Web site has caught the attention of officials of Fred Sands Realtors. PropertyNET and Fred Sands have formed a partnership that soon will allow the high-tech Estate Properties listings to be accessed from Fred Sands’ existing Web site.
Currently Fred Sands has about 70 listings with Estate Properties.
“Typically sellers who have estate properties are looking for advertising vehicles which are designed to match the uniqueness of their homes,” said Kathy Mehringer, vice president and regional manager for the Fred Sands Westlake and Agoura offices.
“Not only does this focus on high-end housing, but it has an upscale presentation that really sets it apart,” Mehringer said. “I don’t even know that I can express what might be coming by the year 2000, but this is the forerunner. People expect to have access to everything from their own homes and their own offices.”
As with most industries, Mehringer said the Internet has had a major impact on the way the real estate business operates.
“We use the Internet for all of our properties. We find it effective for all of our price points,” said Mehringer, whose offices began incorporating the Internet into their advertising campaigns about four years ago.
“The industry was a little slow to embrace the Internet, only because it was very new,” she said. “In the future, we won’t be able to resist it.”
Bob Seitz, chief executive of the Ventura County Coastal Assn. of Realtors, agreed that the future will be highly influenced by the Web.
“The real estate community anticipates an explosion of activity within the next few years,” said Seitz, whose organization represents about 1,100 Realtors.
“The association is making an effort to stay on top of the technology as it changes and making our Realtor members aware of how they can take advantage of the Internet.”
The association’s own Web site links Internet users with other real estate Web sites. Already, Seitz said, Internet use has markedly increased in recent years among the association membership.
“The feedback from them indicates there aren’t at this time any significant effects on the number of transactions and sales that take place as a result of customers browsing [the Web], but there is obviously some of that going on,” he said. “And we all recognize that it’s just a matter of time before the numbers increase.”
