Blazing new trails in cyberspace.

It's a fast-paced world and everybody wants things done quickly even when it comes to buying and selling houses. To accommodate clients on the fast-track, The Corcoran Group brought residential real estate into new world cyberspace.

With 1997 Internet sales totaling over $60 million, and with over 20,000 visitors to our web site and more than 1,000 e-mail inquiries per month, creating a Corcoran web site has proved to be one of our best investments.

With more people than ever before becoming cyber-conscious and using the Internet to look for homes, we are witnessing a new phenomenon. Web-browsers are buying homes right off the Net. The features found on many residential real estates web sites, such as home descriptions, location information, floor plans, financial information, broker profiles and direct e-mail access to brokers are tools enough to make the sales.

E-mail has become the communication of choice between brokers and clients. Not only is it a more efficient way to communicate with clients, but e-mail allows brokers easier access to people all over the world. Today, brokers are receiving e-mail from people in places like California, England and even Russia! According to our brokers, e-mail is more private and efficient because it goes directly to the client's address. With e-mail, there are no more worries about lost taxes and garbled voice messages.

The Corcoran Group was the first residential real estate firm to offer two major new features on its web site: first, a 360-degree panoramic view of a home is available through our new Panapartment Showcase. Much better than a quick-time picture viewer, with the Panapartment Showcase, there is much more viewing flexibility. The user can "walk through" the hallways and into individual rooms. They can look up at the ceiling, down at the floor and turn all the way around for a scope of the apartment.

Secondly, we are the first to link a property listing in The New York Times classifieds on-line to that property's page within The Corcoran Group web site. Once a potential buyer is interested in a Corcoran Group listing in The New York Times classifieds, they just click on the box and link to our web site and the property they were reading about. The page on the Corcoran site contains full, detailed descriptions on the available home, offering more information than that in The New York Times' listings.

Clients don't have the time anymore to go to open houses and make appointments to see a broker. On residential real estate web sites, the user can view apartments at home or at the office then switch to e-mail to start a dialogue with a broker.

One broker sold a $2 million townhouse to a client she met on the Internet. Another agent sold a two-bedroom unit in New York for $725,000, sight unseen, to a California couple who needed a pied-a-terra. And yet another broker sold a one-bedroom duplex to an art dealer in St. Louis who needed a commuter apartment in Manhattan. The broker's profile on the web site made the art dealer feel so comfortable with the broker, he also bought the property sight unseen.

As technology brings the world closer together, residential real estate firms will rely more and more on the web, and have to take leaps and hounds into cyberspace to keep up with the needs of their web-smart clients.