Century 21 Mike Bowman, located in Grapevine, plans to launch two Web sites this month. One site will be a general realty site, while the other will be a foreclosure site — both will serve major Texas markets.
What makes this unique is that the company said this is the first service of this kind offered to users for free and without collecting marketing information, such as names and telephone numbers, through the Web site.
The Web sites are www.TexasHomes.com and REOTexasHomes.com, the foreclosure site. REO stands for real estate owned, which is property in the possession of a lender because of foreclosure.
Bowman already has the Web site www.c21bowman.com to service the Metroplex that gets 1.2 million hits per month. The two new Web sites will also service Austin, El Paso, Houston and San Antonio.
Mike Hirrlinger, a real estate agent with the firm who is helping with the Web sites, said Texas is a great relocation market, so the TexasHomes.com site will be useful for those relocating within the state or those moving to Texas. The other Web site is for people looking to buy foreclosed property.
"There is really not one place in the state where you can go to get foreclosure information," he said.
Hirrlinger said Texas has not seen the drop in the real estate market that many of the areas of the country have seen. He said one reason for that is that Texas did not have overpriced real estate.
"We are going to have foreclosures like every place, but not as many," he said.
Century 21 Mike Bowman, which is ranked 94 for real estate companies, has done it with just two offices. There is the main office at 4101 William D. Tate in Grapevine, and then a relocation center located at Southlake Town Square.
Mike Bowman, who was once an employee of Bell Helicopter and other area companies, decided 36 years ago that real estate was the right business for him. He now owns the No. 1 Century 21 company in the world.
"If I were the smartest guy in the world and I had selected a place to do business, I couldn’t have picked a better location for real estate than right here," he said.
Bowman said he has about 200 agents working with his brokerage. The companyalso boasts that it has more than 22 real estate closings a year per agent.
Technology has been an important part of the company, Bowman said.
He said he has created a number of programs to make real estate transactions more efficient.
One program he is proud of, he said, is a feedback system that collects information from prospective buyers and provides the information to sellers.
He said his office staff e-mails and calls the buyer agents to collect the information, and they get an 85 percent response rate.
Bowman said a few years ago he was asked if he wanted to bring his program to the multiple listing service that lists all real estate for sale in a market. Bowman said he thought it was too much of a job for him, so he passed on the opportunity.
So the service was launched without him. Now his feedback service, called Centralized Showing Service, is being offered locally and nationally.
Bowman said he takes pride in seeing his idea become a national service.
Bowman’s newest technology idea is the launch of these two new Web sites to serve the state.
Dave Bowman, Mike Bowman’s son, said the company will work with real estate agents in the markets it serves around the state. They also are working in partnerships with mortgage and title companies, and other real estate services, Bowman said.
He said the company would like to expand the services after they are launched.
"We are hoping we can have agents all over the state," he said.
On the Web sites, a person can search for property near schools, libraries, restaurants, their workplace, or whatever criteria a person chooses.
"We try to stay ahead of the curve, and this has been a brain child of Mike’s for a long time," he said.