June 2003 - Posts

Tuesday, June 03, 2003 6:56 PM

Point2 has high hopes - Internet software for real estate agents proving popular

A Saskatoon company whose software quickly dominated online heavy equipment auctions has successfully launched software its leadership team believes will become Internet software of choice for real estate agents around the world.

Point2 Internet Systems Inc. officially launched Point2 Agent in January and already has 7,300 real estate agents using it in North America as well as agents operating in a few scattered locations globally.
Brendan King, the project manager for Point2 Agent, said the hope is to have 20,000 agents using the software by July.

"We think that real estate is quite a bit like heavy equipment," King said. "Houses are kind of like 'dozers in that they are unique, people move to them, and they are a fragmented market out there on the Internet.

"So people use our tools to find out exactly what they're looking for."

The quick adoption of the new Point2 product may have something to do with the fact a real estate agent can download and use it without paying.

But King said that unlike now-expired businesses that gave away their software in the dot-com era, Point 2 has created reasons for agents to upgrade to the professional version of the software, which costs $29.95 US or $99.95 US.

Already, enough agents have paid for an upgrade that Point2 managers are confident the real estate software will be a money-maker for the company by the end of the year.

The genesis for Point 2 Agent occurred about two years ago when long-time Saskatoon ReMax agent Mark Wouters was working on a real estate deal with Point2 employee John Fothergill.

Wouters agreed to be part of the beta site (a prototype) as Point2 checked out how easy it might be to convert its heavy-equipment software to another purpose. Later, other well-known Saskatoon Realtors such as Gary Emde, Leah Brisdon and Mike Gustus began using various beta versions of the software to make their individual Web sites user-friendly.

The potential for real estate software sales is huge as there are one million licensed real estate agents in North America alone, King points out.

The potential of that database alone has interested companies such as Microsoft, AOL, and eBay, said Wendell Willick, Point 2 CEO and co-founder. "The whole idea is to dominate real estate software and control the listing inventory in North America," Willick said. "We think we have a runaway train in real estate."

For Wouters, Point 2 just makes it simple to maintain a good Web site at low cost. His main investment has been to buy a digital camera. With each new listing he shoots an exterior shot of the house and perhaps three to four interior shots of the more prominent rooms.

He said these digital images are downloaded by his secretary who uses Point 2 Agent to create a new listing on his Web site within minutes.

"We had a great response from our clients and the general public and it's easy for clients to go onto our site, see the photographs, the room sizes and see the features without having to get in their car and drive by," he said.

Wouters said the software and site tools are particularly useful for out-of-town buyers.

"We've had people come in from the U.S. and Eastern Canada who have already narrowed down their selection and this included last year when it was more in its infancy," he said. "Not everybody is on this system, but a lot of Realtors are."

Point2's King said it is the ease of use for real estate agents and their assistants that makes such software so useful. Before Point2 Agent came along, real estate agents had to pay Web site hosting companies a fee every time a new listing got added to the site.

With Point 2 Agent, a real estate agent can post only 10 house listings in the free version. That's why the expectation is great that most agents will pay to upgrade to the professional packages.

The early success of Point2 in its first six months has additional Internet data traffic flowing through to the Point2 offices at Eighth and Circle which were already big Internet bandwidth users because of the heavy-equipment software and Web hosting.

King said it's fortunate that Point2's offices sit on a major Internet "pipeline" with huge bandwidth capacity.

"We've invested heavily into this," he said, noting that the office building even has backup power generators on site. Since mid-2001, Point2 has grown from 25 employees occupying a floor of the office building to more than 60 people, including about 20 programmers who have helped create the Point2 Agent software.

"We've now got space on three floors, plus the basement," King said. "The reason we're doing so well here is we have a huge talent pool with some of the best programmers in North America right here in Saskatoon. "Caterpillar found that out because they utilize us in Saskatoon to look after their global trading system for the world now."

Point2's rapid growth accelerated after mid-2001 when the Point2 ownership group ended up signing a one-year exclusive servicing deal with the Caterpillar Inc. to supply the heavy-equipment giant with its Internet software.

The money from Caterpillar gave Point2's original ownership group, including Wendell and Barry Willick and three other partners, the financial resources to buy back control of Point2 from bid.com. That Toronto-based company had taken over 51 per cent of the Saskatoon firm during the height of the dot-com public offering craze in 1999.

© Copyright 2003 The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon)
Posted by scorbett
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