April 12, 2000
Site shows selling stats
By Dyke Hendrickson senior staff writer

Most of us are too genteel to ask the new neighbors what they paid for their house down the street.

But a Boston company with a decade of experience in real-estate databases is launching a site this week that provides recent selling prices in neighborhoods in almost every major market in the country.

Neighborly interest aside, the mission of Domania.com is to give prospective homebuyers information about residential housing costs so they can make good buying decisions.

They do this by linking with mammoth databases. Executives say they have access to 24 million records that cover nearly three-quarters of the United States, including the top 50 metropolitan areas.

The result: A person considering a move to Lynn can access records of that area to determine whether the asking price of an attractive house exceeds the amount that people have paid for similar residences.

Or, a Boston-area executive who has been offered a position in Menlo Park, Calif., can search records in that community to see if the raise he has been offered will cover costs in the higher housing markets of Silicon Valley. Domania.com is not the only service that offers facts about the real estate industry. But company executives say it is the largest free on-line collection of home sales comparables.

"Information on housing sales has always been open to the public," said Steven Kropper, Domania.com's president and chief executive officer. "But in most cases it's been difficult for the consumer to find.

"Our site enables buyers and sellers to see how much houses of comparable size and location have been bringing on the market. We think it helps consumers, and will shorten the closing time of the average real-estate salesperson." Of course, the site also serves the curious. Readers of this article, for instance, could likely find the last selling price of every house on their block.

Domania.com was founded as INPHO in 1989. It is privately held, employs 40, and is partly funded by CMGI @Ventures. Company executives say they are soon to close on a $30 million funding round from a group of investors. Executives say revenue will be generated by advertising from service institutions such as lending banks, insurance vendors, real-estate offices and relocation companies.

The company offers several tools. Domania.com's most compelling feature is Home Price Check, the aforementioned free on-line database of home-sales comparisons. And it offers Value Check and Property Tax Tools, to help users determine median values in a community and prospective tax rates.

It is available on its website (www.domania.com), and through the websites of partners, including AOL, Yahoo!, CompuServe, Dow Jones and Motley Fool. The company has linked with numerous databases around the country, including that of the local Banker and Tradesman. Company officials say that Domania.com differs from Banker and Tradesman listings because it offers information on properties throughout the country, while Banker and Tradesman focuses on Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island.

Also, Domania's free service to check the specific prices of individual homes is not offered by Banker and Tradesman.

Real estate professionals seem interested in the idea, but suggest that it will never replace the value of personal service.

"It's an interesting idea, but only one piece of the whole picture," said Chris Teusch, sales manager for the DeWolfe real estate office in Newburyport. "It might give data, but it doesn't reflect the marketplace.

"Our business is supply and demand. Right now there are very few houses for sale. If you want to buy in Newburyport, it doesn't matter what a house sold for three years ago. The important thing is how much do you have to pay for it now." Laura El-Azem, president of the Massachusetts Association of Buyer Agents, said real estate professionals would not be threatened by the free services Domania.com offers.

"There's a lot of information out there, but people come to me because they I know what to do with that information," said El-Azem, who is a sales executive with Buyers Choice Realty in Andover.

"This is a very hot market, and buyers are going to open houses with their checkbooks in hand if they want a house. I think the more information that consumers have, the better for everyone."