CAPE COD REAL ESTATE REALTORS® KEEP PACE WITH TECHNOLOGY
By Mary Kate Shea
Sandwich Broadsider
August 13, 1998, Page 33

In the competitive real estate business, many different marketing mediums are utilized to attract prospective buyers and sellers. In today’s increasingly techno-savvy world, the Internet has become a popular forum for REALTORS®. Plug into the National Association of REALTORS® site, www.realtor.com, and you’ll find available inventory anywhere in the country. You can narrow your search to Massachusetts and peruse 22,000 properties from the Multiple Listing Service Property Information Network. Type in your own specifications: price range, house size, town, and within minutes you've become an educated shopper.

Frank Szedlak Jr., owner/broker of Outer Cape Realty in North Eastham, has been online for only a year and a half, and reports his Web page, www.outercaperealty.com, attracts 1,600 to 1,700 hits per month.

Recalling a sale he made the first week he was online, Szedlak says, “Three young gentlemen were driving to the Cape in their motor home and were on their computer when they called me up and wanted to know if I had anything for rent. It was May or June and they wanted something for the summer, but we were completely booked. I told them I had a duplex for sale and one side was open and maybe the owners would consider renting it. So they came down and looked at the duplex and bought it.”

Creating Web sites for real estate companies and individual agents has become more commonplace, says the broker, because as more companies go online the remaining businesses are pressured to keep pace. “We use the Internet for two reasons: to get sales customers; to inform people of what we have for sale; and also to obtain summer rentals; to let people know what we have available for rent,” the broker says.

Outer Cape Realty recently linked its page to hundreds of additional real estate sites. “There is so much information out there that you need to go on more,” Mr. Szedlak explains. “We seem to have been ahead of it so far, but you can only handle so much. It is probably a combination of the Internet, the economy and the built-up demand, but this will be the best year we have ever had---including the boom of the mid ’80s.”

Jamie Regan, owner/broker with CENTURY 21 Regan Realtors in Mashpee, also knows what the Internet can do for business. With a Web site five years old, Regan was one of the first people in the state to go online. He attributes his site,  www.CENTURY21reganrealtors.com to have improved rental business 20 percent to 30 percent a year and residential sales 5 percent. He doesn’t know how deeply browsers go into his site, but says the page is sometimes visited 1,000 times a week. “Because of the Internet we’re actually working with a wider scope of people from all over the world and the country,” Mr. Regan says. “It's just phenomenal.”

The broker says he has been using computers for his business since 1974, and with a laugh describes them as a wonderful tool that causes some people great aggravation. “While technology helps gather customers,” Mr. Regan says, “you’re not going to sell a house over the Internet. You still have to develop a relationship and get the customer into the car and show them around. That’s where the old traditional methods of marketing real estate come into effect.”

Wendy French, broker with Bay Village Realty Inc., Better Homes and Gardens in Brewster, says while Internet marketing has changed the face of the real estate business, agents still serve the majority of their customers needs, “A lot of REALTORS® are afraid the Internet is going to eliminate their jobs, but I think the person-to-person contact and the other information we are able to provide in terms of knowledge about the community and all that, will still make us necessary.” Ms. French says, “Finding the house is only one piece of the whole transaction.”

“The major advantage of making inventory readily available through the Internet to people,” the broker adds, “is that REALTORS® have sophisticated buyers. Customers know the inventory and have been able to sift through all the stuff out there,” the broker explains. “They select properties they want to see and in a way it’s better for us because they have done a lot of the work that we usually do before we ever meet them.”

Ms. French has worked in real estate for 12 years and determined two years ago that the Internet was going to become a major force in the real estate market. She knew real estate companies were already online and decided a personal page would be advantageous. She hired Web designer Sandra Teller to create www.wfrench.com. “I was probably one of the first people to have my own Web page, but now a good number of Realtors have them and from the chatter I hear, a lot are getting leads off their Web pages.” (The company Ms. French works for also has an online address: www.bayvillagerealty.com).

“I’m pretty technophobic,” Ms. French admits. “I've had to learn to work with their stuff, although it doesn’t come naturally to me” The broker says her first year online didn’t bring many leads, but this past year has picked up. “I would estimate I’ve closed 10-12 sales of leads from the Web page in the last year, and had a lot more inquiries and am working with a lot more people who will probably eventually purchase.”

This site provides information about Mashpee, New Seabury, and Popponesset Real Estate for sale or for rent on Cape Cod, also properties for sale or rent in Bourne, Falmouth, Woods Hole, Sandwich, Cotuit, Marstons Mills, Osterville, Centerville, Hyannis, Hyannisport, Barnstable and all areas of Cape Cod, and the South Shore of Massachusetts. This includes specialty properties such as waterfront homes, golf condo's, golf front properties, new homes, new construction, condominiums, oceanfront homes, 1st time home buyer properties, land for sale, lots for sale, vacation homes, summer homes, cape cod rentals, summer rentals, cottages, waterview, waterfront, steps to beach, luxury homes, and second homes for the discriminating buyer.

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