Real Estate 2001

Dennis DeAndre, founder and president of LoopNet Inc., the Internet's largest commercial real estate listing service, noted that the extent to which the industry has adopted technology is evident in the fact that virtually all brokers now have an Internet presence.

John F. Dawson, VP for CoStar Group's western region, contended that, beyond the marketing capabilities the Internet provides, online information services are shrinking the time between listing properties and finalizing transactions. The question, according to Stanfill, is whether the industry is willing to pay the cost of proliferation of such services. DeAndre believes it is, so long as information services continue to provide high-quality information, of real value to the industry.

John Salustri, national online editor for GlobeSt.com, suggested that survival of Internet real estate information services, is a matter of the paradigm playing out: Who gives the customers what they want. "A lot of dot-coms are based on here's what I can do, not on what is needed," he said. Although Salustri says that online services are improving dissemination of information within the industry, he added, "I don't think the industry is ready for a total online transaction. You can't bring the industry further along than it wants to be dragged."