Cyber-sales abound for Evergreen REALTOR®

Harris Reiter smiles when he hears Realtor say "people don't use the Internet to search for homes". He has good reason to smile. So far, Reiter and his company, Rocky Mountain Real Estate Group in Evergreen, have closed $14 million in Internet business.

"Our site seems to be pleasing to those who view it," says Reiter.

Indeed, the company appears to be doing something right with its site; it won the Internet Real Estate Directory TOP 10 Award as one of the top 10 Real Estate Sites in the world, judged from a group of over 3,400 international Website entries.

Reiter, who's been actively involved in the World Wide Web for nearly two years, attributes the success of his Website (http://www. rmgcolorado.com) to the following factors:

Local management, It's run and managed by the CEO of the company (Reiter), not a third party service provider.; (A service provider is used to program the site, post listings, etc.)." Paying someone else to take care of this for you so you don't have to deal with it will result in less than satisfactory experience and a level of (non) success," he says.
Time. A lot of time is spent announcing the site to various entities, trade links, etc. "Success on the Internet is directly proportionate to the amount of time you spend getting personally involved with your site", says Reiter.
Responsiveness. A quick response to inquiries is given - within 72 hours, those who inquire usually get a "very fancy and nice" snail-mail" package. There is a lot of follow-up via phone and e-mail. The Internet has allowed Reiter to put together some rather interesting deals. Perhaps the most notable deal was the sale of a Wyoming ranch to a buyer from Great Britain. Reiter is currently relocating an entire software company from Ohio (residential and commercial) via the Internet.

So are Internet clients different than other buyers and sellers? Reiter says he finds his Internet clients to be brighter and more sophisticated." They seems to enjoy communicating electronically. It's true that people don't usually buy properties they see on the Internet - but - they form their relationships with Realtors with whom they communicate on the Internet", he says.

Reiter shared one example of this new, brighter brand of client. A software company CEO was looking to buy a house for $400,000 or under. Reiter explained that certain neighborhoods in Evergreen appreciate at differential rates in the future. The CEO wanted proof. Reiter said he couldn't prove it at that moment, it was intuition. The CEO, who was leaving for Cleveland momentarily, told Reiter if he could find him the data, he'd analyze it. So Reiter downloaded about five subdivisions worth of public records to a disk and e-mailed it to him. While on the plane, the CEO got the e-mail, analyzed it and when he reached Cleveland, called Reiter to put an offer on the house for $675,000 and it will close June 1. "These are bright people," said Reiter.

But is the future of the Realtor bright? Reiter sees the role of both the Realtor and the Internet growing in the future. "The role of a Realtor has always been to be, among other things, a provider of information. This role will become increasingly important for those who want to get involved with the Internet in a meaningful way."

As for those Realtors who refuse to use the Internet to sell properties, Reiter has just two words: good luck.

This article first appeared in the Colorado Real Estate News.