Super information highway links Cupit Street down under

Century 21 Cupit Street Realtors of Rogers is reaching customers 12,000 miles away.

Using two Internet web sites — “www.Arkansas.com” and “Realtor.com” — Marcus and Kathryn Wilson of Brisbane, Australia, recently purchased three lakefront acres in Rogers. They found Chad Kumpe, a principal broker with Cupit Street, and the deal was negotiated and closed using e-mail and Federal Express.

Marcus Wilson, the John Deere Co.’s managing director for Australia, Asia and New Zealand, says the Internet made finding a piece of retirement property fun and easy.

“It’s a 16-hour difference from here to Arkansas,” Wilson says via e-mail. “It was a lot of fun for us to get up in the morning here, get on the Internet and see if a message from Chad had arrived. It was fun to anticipate that he would have something to share with us.

“It would have been real easy to move on to someone else if Chad had not been responsive.”

The Wilsons, natives of Tecumseh and Topeka, Kan., are not unique. According to the National Association of Realtors, Realtor.com displays 1.2 million property ads and receives more than 174 million home views each month.

John Sullivan, an account executive with Real Select Inc. and a principal broker with The Property Store in Springdale, says the technology is changing the way real estate is marketed.

“It’s not changing what agents do,” Sullivan says. “It’s actually making them do more of what they used to, which is show property and know where it all exists. All the Internet has done is change the way we market the property. It’s an ad.”

Sullivan, who is also a state-certified real estate instructor, says buyers are still relying on agents to show them the demographics, age of the neighborhoods and guide them on a walk-through of potential properties. The Internet just helps buyers eliminate some of the footwork.

“I really don’t believe in the near future you’re going to see someone go on the Net and plunk down a credit card to buy a home,” Sullivan says. “When they decide what they’re looking for, they still want to see it in person.”

In the Wilsons’ case, they made two trips to the United States to visit family and view Northwest Arkansas properties.

In August, Kumpe showed the couple around the Beaver Lake area and some of the parcels he had e-mailed them pictures of. By December, the three-acre property the Wilsons liked was for sale, and, while visiting for the Christmas holidays, they took a second look.

“The Internet allowed me to pull up examples of property off our multi-listing service and fax or e-mail it to them,” Kumpe says. “It just worked out nice that they were coming through Northwest Arkansas for Christmas. We found the piece I had described, and the Internet just made the whole thing easier and faster.

“It doesn’t just give you a larger market. It gives you an easier one because you can work on a deal with an e-mail that takes five minutes, then go back to keeping up with your other customers.”

Sullivan says advertising on the Internet makes sense for a variety of reasons. The cost of one web page, between $450-$500 for one year, is less expensive than traditional newspaper advertising. Plus, the Internet is open 24 hours per day, seven days per week.

But instead of immediately replacing newspaper and television advertising, he sees the Internet as a nice complement.

“There was a news story about the Victoria’s Secret commercial during this year’s Super Bowl,” Sullivan says. “Within 24 hours of its showing, more than 1 million people had clicked on their web site. That’s using other media to direct people to the Internet to see the goods.

“It’s just the medium that makes the most sense. There’s no comparison in terms of the number of customer looks you get with traditional newspapers circulations versus the Internet.”

Companies like Cupit Street are slowly doing less advertising in other mediums. Cupit used buy a half-page ad in its local Sunday paper. Now the company has reduced that to a one-quarter page.

“The Internet has not revolutionized real estate here yet because we’re in Arkansas,” Kumpe says. “But in other places where people are more technologically astute, they’re finding it’s much easier to talk to clients via e-mail.”

Kathryn Wilson says the Internet was the only way to go in her family’s case.

“It really didn’t seem like we were half way around the world,” she says. “It takes 10 days to two weeks to receive mail from the U.S., and that is by air mail. If it came surface mail, it could take 10 to 12 weeks.

“Communicating through the Net was quick and cost effective.”

The Wilsons are planning more Internet shopping, including the possible purchase of vehicles to make their eventual state-side move smoother.