At Home on the Net

Buying and selling a house is probably the biggest financial transaction most people ever undertake. It's also a time-consuming, labor-intensive, cumbersome process -- in short, a juicy target for an ambitious Internet entrepreneur. Thus was born Internet Home Services, a.k.a. eHome.com, a full-service real estate brokerage firm built around the Web.

The company was launched two years ago, the brainchild of Andrew Oldham, a West Coast real estate attorney and broker, who recognized that real estate sales are primarily about communications-transmitting information from potential sellers to potential buyers and vice versa, with the agent in the middle. Since the Web is all about moving information around, why not use it to streamline the flow?

The eHome.com site is the first and primary point of contact for most home sellers, who enter information and describe their property. They are assigned a live agent, who works with them on preparing the house for sale, setting a price, identifying potential buyers, reviewing proposals, and closing the deal. Throughout the process, sellers are kept informed via e-mail and can check on the status of their transaction anytime by logging on to the Web site.

By making agents more productive, the company is dramatically reducing sales costs, sometimes by more than 50% compared with the conventional way of doing things, reports Leroy Collinwood, online services manager.

An administrative portion of the Web site allows management to quickly see the status of all homes for sale by real estate agent, regional office, and state. "This allows us to make easier decisions about advertising, staffing, and customer service," says Collinwood. Right now, eHome's services are available to sellers only in the San Francisco, Sacramento, and Seattle areas, but the firm plans to roll them out to other cities.