NEW YORK -- Sandy and Christopher Carlson made an offer late last year on a $460,000 one-bedroom loft in Manhattan's East Village before they had even walked in the door.
The Carlsons, who lived in Los Angeles, did not want to cross the continent each time a broker called. Because waiting is not an option in the Manhattan real estate market, they took a tour of another kind -- on the Internet -- looking at floor plans and photographs sent by e-mail and taking virtual tours on a Web site."I had never been inside," Carlson said in a recent telephone interview from Los Angeles before her move. "I just couldn't afford to fly back there every time I heard of something that interested me, and I couldn't afford to stop work for three months and just look out there. So, the Internet was perfect."
More and more, prospective homebuyers and renters are window-shopping by computer. This is particularly true in the New York market, where listings disappear so fast that waiting for the Sunday classifieds can be risky. House-hunting through the Web also permits would-be customers to view a potential home before even contacting a broker.
The changes are being hailed by consumers and most real estate brokerages but have drawn concern from some individual brokers. They fear that potential clients could use the World Wide Web to contact sellers directly, bypassing brokers.
Nationwide, there were more than 3 million homes advertised on the Web in April, compared with the more than 2.4 million that are listed each month in other places, like classified advertisements, experts say.
Analysts say that unlike many new Web ventures, which have high start-up costs and low revenues, some real estate sites have already found a way to become profitable by taking a percentage of sales commissions.
Most New York real estate sites are run by brokerages, but a handful -- like www.mlx.com, which allows anyone to list properties -- are independent companies that have begun to move into the market. These companies make money by charging anyone who wants to browse their listings. Others charge small fees, much lower than standard sales commissions, for listing a property.
"A lot of Internet companies have a hard time making money because they are trying to reinvent the wheel," said Tan Chan, the chief financial officer of Corcoran.com, the site through which the Carlsons recently bought their apartment.
Corcoran.com has spun off from the Corcoran Group real estate brokerage in New York, and will soon move into offices in lower Manhattan. The new company plans to make money by allowing affiliate brokerages worldwide to list real estate on its site. Corcoran.com will receive 25 percent of the commission on any sales that come from its leads, said James W. Kim, its chief executive.
Barbara Corcoran, the president of the Corcoran Group and the chairwoman of both companies, began the Web site with plain text listings in 1994. Over the next three years, brokers began getting calls from clients interested in listings.
Since then, Corcoran has added features like floor plans and a database that allows prospective buyers and renters to search for properties with certain amenities, in specific neighborhoods and within their price range. She has also added photographs, e-mail links to brokers, and 3-D virtual tours. Last year, the company received 28,879 e-mail requests and sold 225 apartments to clients who came to the brokerage through the Web site.