Entrepreneurs reaching realty niches through the Net
Entrepreneurs reaching realty niches through the Net By Dan Rafter Special to the Tribune Published December 26, 2004 David Shallow isn't one of those real estate agents who worries that the Internet is going to hurt his business. And no wonder. Shallow, an agent with Re/Max Professionals Select in Naperville, had listed his contact information for just two weeks on GayRealtyNet when a client living in New Mexico found his name and number on the site. The client, who had logged onto www.gayrealtynet.com, an online database of gay and lesbian real estate agents, read Shallow's profile, thought he'd be the right agent for her and asked him to sell the home she still owned in Chicago. Shallow took the listing and sold the home, more than paying for the $300 listing fee GayRealtyNet charges agents to be included in the database. GayRealtyNet is just one of many real estate sites catering to specific niches. As more buyers and sellers turn to the Web, a host of entrepreneurs are creating specialized sites that serve narrow groups of consumers, targeting everyone from senior citizens looking for retirement communities to Hispanic buyers to people wanting to live in golf course developments. Shallow never expected GayRealtyNet to work as quickly as it did. "My client was a single lesbian who found it easier to work with a gay Realtor," Shallow said. "It's easier for gay and lesbian buyers and sellers to work with a gay agent. They don't have to explain about where their husbands or wives are. There aren't those awkward moments. It's just more comfortable." Shallow's story is becoming more common. Research from the National Association of Realtors suggests that consumers are growing ever more comfortable searching the Internet for home listings, with the most recent profile of home buyers and sellers released by the association showing that 74 percent of buyers use the Net as an information source. Many niche sites are successful, too. Jeff Hammerberg, a Colorado real estate agent who founded GayRealEstate.com in August of 2004, expects his niche site to generate more than $170,000 in gross revenues in its first year, thanks largely to the fact that he has convinced more than 3,600 real estate agents to join the site's database at www.gayrealestate.com. Also successful is www.golfcoursehome.net, the online home of Golf Course Home, which connects buyers to golf course communities. David Lott, the site's owner, said that more than 2,300 potential buyers visit the site each day while more than 100 golf course communities have signed up to be listed on the site. There's little doubt why these specialty sites have become so popular. They earn their operators money. This can be good news for consumers. As more niche sites pop up, buyers and sellers have more places to turn to find exactly what they are looking for. Consider the case of Chuck Romano, a real estate agent with Century 21 Country North in Belvidere. He's tapped into one of the rarest of real estate specialities, selling homes in airport communities. These communities, as their names suggest, cater to buyers who own planes and want to live near their own hangar. Selling such a property is a challenge, though. There are only so many people interested in buying a home that touts runway access as one of its main benefits. So Romano, like other agents, has turned to the Internet, listing his airport homes in the database of AirportHomes (www.airporthomes.com). Romano is trying to move a 3,000-square-foot house with a 2,300-square-foot hangar in Bel-Air Estates, just north of Belvidere, near Rockford. The house is the first that Romano has listed on the site. "Sites like these are great," Romano said. "They really are the way to go when you have a specialty item. People now know how to get on the Internet and search for things like airport homes. That's what people are doing now, and you have to take advantage of that." Home buyers and sellers can target specific kinds of real estate agents who, for instance, specialize in serving their age range, income level, ethnicity, or home preference. And the providers of such sites expect demand for them to grow. From his office in San Diego, John Beneventi, chief financial officer of the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals, speaks with pride when he mentions Real Estate Espanol, a site he co-founded -- at www.real-estateespanol.com. The site, which connects home buyers and sellers to real estate agents dedicated to serving the country's growing Hispanic population, now claims a database of more than 10,000 real estate agents, and has experienced solid growth since its founding in January of 2000, Beneventi says. About 150,000 unique visitors stop by the site every month, he says. "When we started we were the first bilingual real estate-focused site with a business-to-consumer play," Beneventi said. "Now we've gotten beyond the point where most households have the technology to access a site like ours. I expect that we will see more of what we've been seeing: Everyone is now fragmenting off to different areas of the marketplace. That's healthy for this business." Beneventi won't get an argument from David Hehman, president of San Francisco-based EscapeHomes.com, a site that helps buyers find vacation or second homes. The site, which has existed since 1999, has about 250 real estate agents and their second-home listings. "This is the future, I think, of online real estate," Hehman said. "The more general sites in their attempts to serve everyone don't serve anyone very well. Seniors have different needs than someone who is relocating their residence because of a job change. Sites that recognize this and specialize are ahead of the game." The sites are far from foolproof, though. Many of them have limited listings. And niche sites are not yet even a blip on the radar screen when it comes to customers' use of the Internet in the home-buying process. Walt Molony, a spokesman for the National Association of Realtors, says most niche sites don't yet register on the studies the association conducts on the way home buyers and sellers use the Internet. For instance, of the 75 percent of buyers who use the Internet to search for homes, the vast majority of them log onto the sites that have the most home listings. The biggest of these is Realtor.com, which, Molony says, earns visits from 52 percent of all buyers looking for homes. This doesn't mean, though, that niche sites are unimportant. Molony said many of them, especially those catering to specific ethnic groups, such as Real Estate Espanol, can play an important part in boosting homeownership rates.