Real Estate Moves On Line
This is the concluding article in an 11-part series examining various aspects of real estate on the South Fork.
Two years ago there was hardly a real estate broker in the Hamptons who knew what E-mail was, let alone how to get around on the Internet. Today, more than half the agencies between Southampton and Montauk are on line or planning to be, even if a lot of brokers don't quite understand yet what they're doing there, or even where "there" is.
The one or two brokers in each office who do know their way around the Net, however, are enthusiastic about this new sales tool. They say most of the inquiries that arrive electronically come from people who are not just lookers but serious, committed prospects.
That stands to reason, if only because, when it comes to the Internet, getting there is definitely not half the fun. People who have already invested a sizable chunk of time waiting for America Online to connect, deciding where to search, and browsing through dozens of pages of photographs and text tend to be, as real estate brokers say, live ones.
Only recently has there been that much out there worth searching for. In early 1996, when the Tina Fredericks agency, Dayton-Halstead, Cook Pony Farm Real Estate, and a few other pioneers took their first tentative steps into cyberspace, their Web pages typically displayed an exterior photograph of a house with just a few brief lines of description underneath - a broker's window gone high-tech.
Today, colorful graphics and the wonders of technology have made it possible to sit in your house and wander through somebody else's, click by click, room by room, even zooming in on the kitchen cabinets to see whether they're made of metal or wood. An agency can show as many houses as it is willing to keep track of; some have as many as 200, others as few as 30.
The setup is designed for maximum efficiency. Each house has a number. "By the time people call, they've done some homework," explained Bill Stoecker of Dayton-Halstead in East Hampton. "They say, 'I'd like to see number XX.' They ask some specific questions."
Seeing The Same Thing
Even if the first contact is made in the usual way, a wired-in broker can take advantage of the Net.
"I had a high-tech guy who didn't come through the Internet," said Mr. Stoecker, "and we could communicate visually over the phone in a way [brokers] never could before. He'd say, 'Wait, let me pull that up,' and we'd both be looking at the same photo."
Queries also arrive by E-mail. "We got E-mail from Italy last week, looking for investment property," said Melanie Ross, president of the Cook Agency. "Every E-mail gets answered immediately. That's a rule. You don't wait two weeks to answer E-mail."
The vast majority of correspondence and follow-ups comes not from faraway places, as many had expected it would - although California generates a lot of traffic - but from the New York metropolitan area.
According to Hamptons Real Estate Online, a Westhampton marketing service that has helped many local realtors get on the Web and stay there, investment banking types surfing from their office computers account for much of the activity.
HREO's automated counters tallied 4,905 inquiries between November and early June from Lehman.com, 4,320 from bankerstrust.com, and 3,138 from IBM.net.
"The reason they use the Net is they are busy and can't waste time," ventured Jan Robinson, president of Hampton Homes in East Hampton, which as of mid-June had rented 31 houses that began with online queries.
Sometimes questions come from "professionals who have access in their homes," Ms. Robinson said. "I get E-mail timed at 2 in the morning, when they have time."
Facts Laid Out
Al Eith of Cook's Southampton office agreed. "I don't think they have time to go lollygagging around for a scenic tour of the area," he said. "They want the facts - they want it laid out."
A Goldman Sachs executive, a "very shy and private" man born in India but based in Manhattan, bought a million-dollar-plus stone "castle" on seven acres north of Water Mill, complete with an exercise room, from Mr. Eith recently, in a contact that began on the Web.
"He didn't know that much about the Hamptons," said the broker, "but he liked the data I gave him. He's very analytical - wanted to get into every little nut, bolt, and screw."
In The Door
So did Sean Murphy, who works for VH1, a division of MTV, which he described as "very technology-forward."
"I didn't end up buying propery I saw on the Net, but that's what actually hooked me in," said Mr. Murphy. "The Internet got me in the door. You get the interest to go out and look, and then the agent gets a feel for what you really want."
He made initial contact from his office, he said: "We all get Netscape and are encouraged to use it as a resource, and people noodle around on it."
Amagansett was Mr. Murphy's first choice, but "there was nothing there in my price range," he said. He wound up buying a $225,000 house on Copeces Lane in Springs from Renate Klam of the Condie Lamb Agency. The closing is next week.
Sight Unseen
Joe Vallo, on the other hand, rented over the Net sight unseen.
Down in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., last winter, Mr. Vallo, a divorced lawyer who has spent several summers on the South Fork but could not make the trip this year because he had just adopted an infant daughter, fired up AOL and typed in "Hamptons," which automatically brings up a top-of-the-page "banner" ad for HREO. He "checked out" the houses he liked, he said, and E-mailed several brokers for more information.
He chose a two-story saltbox on Cedar Drive in Springs, said Mr. Vallo, for "the price, the size, and the location." Dayton-Halstead's Mr. Stoecker "overnighted pictures" of the house to Florida and Mr. Vallo "had some friends run by and take a look," but otherwise the deal was strictly fiber-optic.
Mr. Stoecker called Mr. Vallo "the best tenant I've had this summer. Never talks about spider webs."
"This is my first cyberhouse rental, but I use the Net for many things," said Mr. Vallo. "Recently I shopped for a baby jogging stroller on the Net."
Vacant Property
In addition to sales and rentals, brokers offer vacant property on line, though this is a horse of a different color. No one has quite figured out how to showcase an empty tract of land to best advantage, given the medium's limitations. It helps if there is water, but one tree looks pretty much like another, especially on a small screen.
It took Jeff Saul half a year to find the lot he bought in May. "As of six months ago, all you could see [on line] was trees," said Mr. Saul, a software developer who lives in Manhattan's Battery Park City. "I think if you could see a map of the lot and an aerial shot, and maybe what houses in the neighborhood look like, it would help."
Still, he said, "seeing the pictures and the prices made me start to like the idea of owning." After corresponding by E-mail with several brokers he narrowed down the search, came out to look, and wound up buying a flag lot on Long Hill Road in Northwest Woods from Helen Munn of the Condie Lamb Agency.
If the Internet is given credit for being a catalyst in transactions such as Mr. Saul's, then it may be playing a larger role on the South Fork real estate stage than has hitherto been understood.
More To Come
And it can be expected to grow, especially if Nicholas and Theresa Kouri and their backers, whom they identified as "plugged-in summer people," continue pouring money into the couple's Westhampton-based HREO.
The Princeton-educated Kouris, devout believers in the future of electronic commerce, confidently expect that a new technology called WebTV, which marries the computer to television, will put 80 percent of America on the Net in two or three years. If that happens, they say, it will tranform not just real estate but every other business in the nation.
Keeping Up
Meanwhile, even brokers who see little benefit from the Internet say they will continue to maintain a presence there, if for no other reason than that the Joneses must be kept up with.
Hampton Homes has been on line only since January. "I called and asked other brokers, should I do this," said Ms. Robinson. " 'Do it,' they said, 'because everyone else is doing it and it's the wave of the future.' "
"I think we get more browsers than reality," said Tina Fredericks, "and the Net is a beast that you have to feed constantly. It can get so cram med with garbage. It's really a lot of work."
"But," said Ms. Fredericks, "I think as time goes on it will be the way to go. What choice do I have?"