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I'm just catching up here ....

It seems to me that this debate has focused on:

1. Will buyers/sellers use the Internet to find and buy homes instead of
traditional "newspaper" classified methoeds, etc.

2. Will the traiditional middlemen, i.e, Realtors and newspapers, get cut
out of the process of buying and selling.

There seems to be an assumption here that if the Web begins to dominate
that both newspapers and Realtors will lose out. I mean, the assumption is
that real estate classified ads are only threatened if the traditional
process is threatened and if the traditional process is not threatened, or
Realtors are not threatened, then newspaper classifieds will survive.

I don't see why that is so. It seems to me that Realtors can, and will, do
just fine with out newspaper classifieds.

When my wife and I want to look at real estate, the first place we turn is
the Web. When you go to the Web, the best searching isn't done at newspaper
sites or even Yahoo! It's done on the sites of forward thinking real estate
agents.

Who is being disintermediated here is not Realtors, but newspapers.

As has been pointed out, it's pretty darn hard to buy or sell a house
without an agent -- not impossible, just hard. But it isn't difficult to
find houses for sale, or to sell a house, without a newspaper.

What is difficult on the Web though, is finding all of the real estate Web
sites for a specific region. Yahoo! is rarely complete in its links and
local "portals" are hard to find. The local chamber of commerce, if they
list local links at all, only link to member sites.

This is where there is an opening for online newspapers and it harkens back
to what I've said before -- local online newspapers should be the local
"portal." The local newspaper should create an online directory of local
real estate Web sites. To be useful at all, it must be comprehensive and
complete, which means you can't charge for a link. But there might be other
ways to make money off of the service -- just get creative.

>From my perspective, newspapers should be very, very worried about losing
classifieds in all catagories, including real estate. The proper response
isn't "what, me worry," it's, what can we do that's creative, forward
thinking and provides the best service to our community, our readers and
our advertisers.

Best,
H.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Howard Owens // mailto:howard@rvclub.com
The RV Club // http://www.rvclub.com/
President // #L-CHAR-00001
ICQ# // 5400300
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Get the Scoop -- Get RV Smart

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^



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