1. NEW AND NOTABLE. Aegon USA Realty Advisors, headquartered in Cedar Rapids, IA, provides mortgage lending services nationwide. Chiles & Company offers commercial brokerage, consulting and property management services in Seattle, WA. Grupo Barsac developments and manages industrial parks in Tiajuana, Baja California, Mexico.

As individual buildings develop their own web sites, registering a street address as a URL will become increasingly important. For a look at the future, visit the 317 Madison Avenue and 51 East 42 Street, New York City, web sites featuring basic information for prospective tenants, including space available data, floor plans and maps. Note that the URLs are simply the street addresses. That’s easy to remember.

2. INTERNET USAGE. "According to various surveys, about 40% of U.S. households have computers, but only about 15% are hooked up to the Internet. Of that group, only about 15% make heavy use of the Internet. That means that just 2% to 3% of American households, or perhaps three million, are Internet habitues." Wall Street Journal, June 16, 1997. My guess is that a similar percentage of real estate professionals, 2%-3%, regularly use the Internet at a business tool. We’ve got a long way to go.

3. LOCAL REAL ESTATE NEWS. American City Business Journals has launched an interesting new feature, the Real Estate Journal. They have taken real estate content from their business newspapers in 35 markets, each covered by a real estate reporter, across the nation to create this online publication solely focused on the real estate industry. A powerful search engine enables you to look up text and quickly find information on a single company in many markets. For example, a search for "compass" produced articles from three separate markets: Columbus (Ohio), Dallas (Texas) and Washington, D.C. American City does not cover New York, Chicago or Los Angeles, so you may also want to check out Crain’s New York Business, Crain’s Chicago Business Online and the Los Angeles Times.

4. ADVERTISING BANNERS. Consider buying a banner at PikeNet to drive traffic to your web site and customers to your service. In May advertising banners at PikeNet were seen over 27,000 times. Buy a banner at the Top Level or over your Market Area. Full details are available by clicking the "Banner Advertising" hyperlink at the bottom of the PikeNet home page.

5. LOCAL PROPERTY INFORMATION. A growing number of local governmental bodies are making their information available to the public over the Internet as a way to reduce customer service expenses. The newest site in PikeNet is the Bexar County Appraisal District (San Antonio, TX) which has created a strong web presence with a good search engine. Other sites at PikeNet include Harris County, TX, and Hillsborough and Pinellas Counties, FL. These sites, of course, raise the issue of how vendors which have traditionally re-packaged and sold this information in the past (remember micro fiche and CD-ROMs?) will continue to evolve their products to add greater value.

6. WEB SUCCESS STORIES. Each week I try to write a "Web Success" story. These are stories that demonstrate the value of the web as a business productivity tool. If you have used the net to save time or make money, please send e-mail to Peter Pike .

7. SUBSCRIBING AND CANCELING. If you do not want to receive this Dispatch, please reply with "cancel" in the subject field to remove your name. Please include your name and company name in the body of the message. If you know a person who would like to be added to the list, please send e-mail with the word "subscribe" in the title to Peter Pike .

--Peter Pike