Internet Opens Doors for Mortgage Brokers, Buyers

The housing market may be slowing down across many states, but the technological world is making it easier than ever for individuals to go through the home mortgage loan process.

For example, John Sobecky found his condominium online, financed the sale over the phone and spent only three hours on the walkthrough, inspection and closing.

“I never even met the listing broker or the mortgage broker,” he said.

A recent National Association of Realtors survey showed that 80 percent of home buyers used the Internet to search for a home in 2006 compared, with a scant two percent a decade earlier. Websites are replacing paper listings; and in the newest technological twist, some real estate agents offer podcasts of their properties as well.

Broker Rudy Mayer began turning his listings into downloadable audio and video files about a year ago, recently upgrading to high definition. The podcasts are downloaded automatically to the iPods or mp3 players of anyone who’s subscribed to his site so potential buyers can view or listen to them anytime, reports The Boston Globe.

Not long ago, he got a call from a man in Paris who saw a $650,000 home listed on the site. The man flew in on a Saturday and bought the house the same day.

“I probably get 75 percent of my customers from the website,” said Mayer, of the ERA Masiello Group. “You don’t get any walk-ins anymore. That’s gone.”

Brian Moses, sales trainer and recruiter for RE/MAX Properties in Nashua, gets more than 50 percent of his business from the Internet. He said the Internet is the future of the real estate business.

“We’re going to have real estate training that you can download to your iPod or mp3 players,” Moses said. “In the early days, I used to have to get on a plane and fly to California to get trained.”

Making home loan transactions smoother and quicker is important in a slow real estate market, experts say.

Existing home sales fell 1.9 percent nationwide in September, while a 1.1 percent drop in private residential construction spending led to a drop in total construction spending to $1.2 trillion.