HP targets real estate agents as new tech buyers
By Julie Howard
Idaho Statesman
BOISE, Idaho — The feeling that the housing market is one of the few economic bright spots nationwide has not been lost on Hewlett-Packard Co., which has long cultivated customers in the real estate industry.
Associated Press
Hewlett-Packard has become more vocal in marketing to that group in recent months as corporate spending drags.
Michael Shumway, operations manager for information technology at John L. Scott Real Estate, trains his company's new agents in Boise, Idaho. Hewlett-Packard Co., finding housing to be a highly viable industry these days, is marketing its technology to such professionals.
Half of the company's real estate focus is based in Boise, where executives have weekly strategy meetings about how to sell more personal data assistants, notebooks, digital cameras and printers to real estate professionals.
Real estate agents say that theirs is a business of old-fashioned relationships, but increasingly more of them are seeing the benefits of using technology to pull in clients.
In 2000, real estate agents spent more than $6 billion on technology products — a market too big for Hewlett-Packard to ignore. The company does not release sales figures by industry, but manager Mark Parsons said that the real estate figures are significant.
"It's a $6.3 billion market, and we're playing in a big part of that," said Parsons, who focuses on real estate from the company's offices in northwestern Boise.
Of the four teams concentrating on selling to the real estate industry worldwide, two are based in Boise. The others are in Vancouver, Wash., and in San Diego.
Parsons counts about 2 million real estate professionals in the United States, 835,000 in the National Association of Realtors. And they buy technology — from digital cameras to laptops.
"You'd be amazed at how many IT products they're using," Parsons said.
Hewlett-Packard saw the value of the market well before the high-tech boom. Agents were an easy market for calculators to figure out loans and interest payments.
"It broadened out over the years to a whole suite of products that can go in a real estate person's office — anything from a PDA to a digital camera," Parsons said.
Boise figures large in the real estate market because HP's facility there specializes in products meeting the needs of those clients: high-quality printers that can generate fliers, digital cameras to upload photos of homes, software dedicated to the industry.
Work is geared toward bringing products to the market that the real estate professionals are likely to need.
"They're all competing with each other to get a listing," said Parsons. "It's all about what tools allow them to compete the most effectively."
Hewlett-Packard operates two Web sites for real estate professionals — one offering classes in using tech devices and software; the other promoting products.
The National Association of Realtors lets technology manufacturers know what type of devices would be helpful in the next generation of products. Last year, the association established its Center for Realtor Technology in Chicago, dedicated to lobbying manufacturers for products and sharing technology information with association members.
"If you look at our entire member base — with more than 80 percent using two or more devices — that's a lot of devices," said association vice president Mark Lesswing. "Technology is supplementing the way our members do business. It's adding another channel of communication. We're coming to a point where having a
Web presence is as important as having a brick-and-mortar office."
One possible concern might be too many high-tech devices to keep track of. The Realtors association is lobbying the industry for convergence devices, which consolidate two or more devices into one. The first was introduced by Danger Inc. in California in the last month.
The pocket-sized HipTop combines a cell phone, PDA and computer with Web and e-mail service. The multifunction device of the future will cost a fraction of owning several different machines, said Lesswing, who hopes that encourages agents to use technology.
"Realtors need to stay in the loop," he said.
Hewlett-Packard is looking into expanding the functions of its IPAQ pocket computer to add video transmission capabilities and a cell phone function. But that change may be more than a year away.
