Surfing for a Home

      When Jayn Albury and her family decided to relocate from their Santa Fe, N.M., home, they did what most folks in their position would do -- they looked at tons of homes, explored many towns and neighborhoods and talked to lots of people.
      But the Alburys didn't have to leave their old home to find their new one, or even to become acclimated there.
      Using their personal computer, Jayn Albury, 46, and husband Gordon, 68, canvassed the Internet day and night and eventually found the perfect three-bedroom historic house in Fredericksburg, Va., through an online listing of homes. They also located a new veterinarian for their pet cat and toy poodles, a dance studio for their two children and area restaurants.
      "You can just sit there in your nightgown and type away. I was amazed at how much information there was," said Albury, adding that local maps she downloaded have helped familiarize the family with their new neighborhood.
      Increasingly, individuals and professionals are turning to the Internet -- and the more than 20,000 real estate pages on the World Wide Web, consumer online services and specialized databases -- for help in a variety of real estate transactions.
      Information about home listings, loans, taxes, home values, real estate laws and demographics is available in seconds with a few keystrokes. There's also an immense supply of material on insurance, appraisals, inspections and home repairs.
      Buyers will still need to physically visit prospective properties and meet with professionals before closing a deal, but the information available online can make them better-informed consumers. That can be especially useful to first-time buyers with little knowledge of the industry and for those relocating, like the Alburys. They saved time and money by not having to make repeated cross-country trips before their spring move.
      "They're using the Internet to get a feel of what they want to tell their broker. The comfort level increases in preshopping," said Russell K. Booth, president of the National Association of Realtors, a Washington-based trade group, which encourages member Realtors to market homes in cyberspace in addition to the traditional methods.
      "It's one more tool. It's not going to supplant everything," said Salt Lake City resident Booth, who has Web pages for his commercial and residential real estate businesses. "It's more fun than putting a `for sale' sign up."
      Real estate agents and lenders have been creating Web pages and listing property and services online at a frenetic pace, a trend that began two years ago. By some accounts, as many as 200 Web pages are being set up each week.
      About a quarter of all real estate companies already have Internet home pages and another 7 percent plan to create one in the future, according to a poll conducted last year by the NAR. Eight percent of individual agents have a Web site and 21 percent more plan to set one up, the poll found.
      So far, though, only a fraction of sales have been generated online. Eighty percent of those polled said they've gotten no business, though 1 percent reported getting over 20 percent of its business from cyberspace.
      Still, plugged-in PC users -- that includes an estimated 15 percent of the U.S. population who subscribe to online services -- are regularly browsing Web sites.
      Pat Brown, director of Cobalt Group Inc. in Seattle, whose Home Scout site (www.homescout.com) provides 437,000 home listings nationwide, says around 6,000 people each day make a total of 10,000 searches and view 35,000 pages of information.
      "It's a great way for them to look at the market and see what homes are going for," said Brown. "They can see whether they can afford to move to a certain location or not."
      At the NAR Web site (www.realtor.com), there are 700,000 properties listed nationwide, most with accompanying color photos and detailed descriptions, and each home is viewed by PC users on average 25 times a month. There's even a backlog of 350,000 listings, according to the NAR's Booth.
      Since there are so many real estate sites to choose from, finding the right one can be overwhelming for even the most seasoned Internet user. Most people will need to do some surfing on their own to become familiar with what's out there. There are, however, specialized directories to help get started.
      One of these is the International Real Estate Directory (www.ired.com), among the first major real estate sites to hit the World Wide Web. IRED provides a series of links to Internet sites related to the real estate industry worldwide. Home listings for special market segments are also represented, including foreclosures, for-sale-by-owner properties, vacation homes and luxury houses.
      Particularly helpful is the fact that IRED examines each of its links and rates the site for content and the overall quality of information.
      Looking for a ski shack in Aspen, Colo.? Local Realtor B.J. Adams & Co. has a Web site (www.bjac.net) that provides information about the area and what your money can buy -- $250,000, for example, gets you a one bedroom condo in need of TLC.
      Internet French Property (www.french-property.co.uk/) has over 500 pages of listings. Among them: a darling little one bedroom apartment overlooking the Mediterranean (iron and vacuum cleaner included) and 20 minutes from Monte Carlo, available for around 1.125 million francs, or around $192,000
      The Yahoo! Internet directory, and other search engines such as Alta Vista, also are helpful. The real estate sections provide links to home listings, real estate and mortgage brokers, trade associations, research institutes and many other services.
      Yahoo! users who type in the keyword "real estate" are automatically linked to Homenet (www.homenet.com) and its 2,949 categories with 8,228 Web sites. They can narrow their search by typing in the name of the state, region or country as well.
      For instance, by searching for "Florida," users gain access to 175 categories of information and 788 sites. "South Florida" has three categories and 81 sites, while "Miami" has six categories and 50 sites, including a breakdown for North Miami, Miami Lakes and Miami Beach. There are beautifully photographed pictures of property for sale, as well as information on the region's weather, recreation facilities and employment opportunities, to name a few topics.
      For America Online users, subscribers receive a wide range of services on AOL's Real Estate Desk, including classified ads from select newspapers and bulletin board ads from individuals and professionals looking to buy, sell, rent or swap property. Links to Internet web sites also are provided.
      The Alburys found their Fredericksburg, Va., home through Home Scout. To conduct their search, they had to specify the area, type of home, price range, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, as well as other options, they desired. They found several homes fitting their criteria, but fell in love with the one they would buy -- a $215,000 three bedroom house, with a winding staircase, built in the 1890s.
      "I took note of the listings and e-mailed our real estate agent, who showed us the homes when we took our trip to the East Coast," said Mrs. Albury, a former private school operator.