ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, January 7, 1996 TAG: 9601090004
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG
SOURCE: ELISSA MILENKY STAFF WRITER
The offices of Raines Real Estate Inc. can be found in an old-fashioned, colonial-style house with white pillars and a sprawling front porch on Blacksburg's Main Street.
When it comes to the business itself, however, Raines is on the cutting edge of technology. The real estate company, part of Better Homes and Gardens, recently launched a database on the Internet that allows customers to look for their ideal house, apartment or town home by entering their specifications on the computer.
"We think this is really opening us up to national markets," said Joe Jones, company president.
Right now, 50 homes that are up for sale are listed on the database. The Raines staff is adding entries to the database at a rate of about 10 per day. By the end of January, rental properties also will be included.
Though no homes have been sold as a direct result of the database, there have been 8,500 "visits" to the page as of this week.
"That shows there's a tremendous amount of interest in that type of information," Jones said.
The database works this way:
From the home page on the World Wide Web, a customer can enter a "search page" where a series of questions are asked - the number of bedrooms and baths desired, location, price range and the style of home. After answering those key questions, the available properties that fit the customer's specifications will pop up on the screen, complete with a picture and brief description.
A Cape Cod-style home in Giles County is described with this comment: "Could have been granny's house with main floor bedroom, hardwood floors, full basement." If interested in the home, potential customers are encouraged to send electronic mail or call the company for more formal proceedings.
Other information is included in the database, such as the pictures and phone numbers of the agents at Raines, the New River Valley's climate and background on the area's school systems.
"It's sort of like a teaser," Jones said. "It allows someone to write in and say, 'I want more information.'"
Other real estate companies in Virginia have developed similar databases. Real Estate Web, which provides property listings primarily in the Hampton Roads area with a similar search engine, was developed by InfiNet, an on-line computer services and Internet provider owned by Landmark Communications and Knight-Ridder Inc.
Local real estate brokers such as U. Wayne Elliot of ERA Townside, Inc. and Heller Real Estate Inc. have home pages on the Internet that provide listings, though not a full database with a search function.
Raines' database was designed by Internet Business Technologies, Inc., a local home page design business housed in the Corporate Research Center. Raines paid for the work with the aid of a $390 grant from the Greater Blacksburg Chamber of Commerce, part of a program designed to encourage Blacksburg businesses to get on the Blacksburg Electronic Village.
IBT President Robert James said his company will be charging real estate companies about $700 to develop a similar database. Raines got a discount rate, at about $600, because IBT used its account to develop a format for a real estate database.
"We've had a lot of interest from other real estate companies," James said.
Jones is hoping the database will be especially helpful for people moving into the New River Valley from out of town. It also will help the agents, who will easily be able to pull up properties that fit customers' specifications.
But does this mean people will actually buy homes via computer without human contact? Jones doesn't think that will happen anytime soon.
"It can't replace the multiple lists," Jones said. "What you can do is give people enough to see if people have an interest."
LENGTH: Medium: 75 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: A listing from Raines Real Estate's homepage. Theby CNBaddress for the Raines home database is http://www.ibt.net/raines/.
The electronic mail address is raines.salesibt.net. color