Real Estate Commons^™

Real Estate War In Cyberspace: An Emerging Electronic Market?, Kevin Crowston, Rolf T. Wigand

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

In this paper, we explore how electronic commerce, the World-Wide Web in particular, is affecting the real estate industry. Real estate is a promising setting for studying electronic commerce because it is an information-intensive and information-driven industry; transaction based, with high value and asset-specificity; with many market-intermediaries (agents and brokers who connect buyers and sellers rather than buying or selling themselves); and experiencing on-going information technology (IT) related changes. We analyze a real estate transaction to suggest where IT might change the process of buying or selling a house and discuss several current ventures in this area. This analysis suggests …