Clicking For Condos

Buyers Surf the Web to Explore the Market and Buy Properties

First-time home-buyer Chris Hall, 23, barely had time to haul his belongings into his new two-bedroom condo this March, between work and the hours spent rooting for his alma mater George Mason in the NCAA basketball playoffs.

Actually, the condo-buying process took a lot less effort.

Hall conducted much of the hunt from his home computer, using free Web sites that did the legwork for him. His main tool, BirdsEyeSearch.com, paired Google's online mapping service with a real-time inventory of local resale properties entered by brokers' agents.

The inventory, which agents call a multiple listing service (MLS), ticked off price, location, year built, size and features. With this one site, Hall could pinpoint prospective condos that met his search criteria. Then, with a click, he could get a closer look at properties that interested him and map the condos' proximity to spots like his office or the grocery store.

Before discovering BirdsEyeSearch, Hall was looking for a home on craigslist.org. He'd search for properties described as "located next to Metro's Orange line," which he considered a necessity. After finding a potential pad, he then had to verify the claims by cutting and pasting the address of each condo and Metro station into Google.com's mapping service.

Hall, a resource analyst at a software company, said that when he discovered the site, he realized it "was doing exactly what I was doing, except you could search a specific area, and it took a lot of the grunt work out."

During his apartment hunt, he came to depend on the site and a realtor from Arlington's DROdio Realty, which operates BirdsEyeSearch. After a four-month search, Hall found and purchased a $430,000 unit in Woodbury Heights, about a third of a mile from the Court House Metro station.

Like Hall, many people are tapping the Web to get the full scoop on properties, neighborhoods and real-estate trends. Call it surfing for shelter or clicking for condos -- the Internet is changing the way people buy homes.

With the 'net, buyers are not entering into condo sales clueless, placing all their trust in the agent. Nor are they cooped up with a strange realtor in a car for hours. Researching the market online can also prevent buyers from being duped by realtors.

"Agents are very territorial and try to steer clients to where they get the most commissions," said Daniel R. Odio, the Arlington realtor (and former computer company exec) who started BirdsEyeSearch last December. "We don't need to be lording over our clients and telling them they can only go to certain locations."

So does this signal an end to realtors? Odio thinks real estate sites will never replace the role of a live pro, because consumers rarely have the time or know-how to read up on and execute complex financial and legal real-estate transactions.

Sites like his save buyers time and make the time realtors like him spend with clients more productive. "A realtor shepherds the client through the negotiation and closing. We can keep buyers from doing something stupid," Odio said.