CondoDomain opens in NYC

Editor's note: This article is reposted with permission by The Real Deal. Click here to view the original article.

By CANDACE TAYLOR

New York City is getting a new VOW-based brokerage company, in what may soon become a flood of companies taking advantage of the new technology.

Boston-based CondoDomain, a Web-based discount real estate brokerage, is now a member of the Real Estate Board of New York and offers a VOW, or virtual office Web site. That means that customers who log onto CondoDomain's New York site can browse through all of the listings in REBNY's database.

CondoDomain founder and CEO Anthony Longo told The Real Deal that the appearance of VOWs in New York City has opened the floodgates for new companies like his to penetrate the lucrative New York City market.

"The VOW will lay the groundwork for companies like ours to come in and compete," said Longo, who has had his eye on the New York market for years.

The company, which specializes in new developments and discounts its commissions by 20 to 75 percent from the usual 6 percent fee, has offices in Boston, Chicago, Washington D.C., Northern Virginia and Baltimore (with all listings on one Web site), but Longo said he never felt New York was an option without a true multiple listings service.

When REBNY announced last November that it would offer a VOW, Longo said, he immediately began plans to set up an office here -- starting by moving to New York to oversee the plans.

"Once I confirmed it was real, I moved to New York the next weekend," he said.

The company has hired two local agents and has office space in Soho, he said.

CondoDomain, which began operating as a brokerage in 2008, primarily works with buyers. It offers two fee options, the first being a full-service model in which brokers guide a buyer through the apartment search in the traditional way.

The difference comes when the sale is completed: when the CondoDomain broker receives the usual 3 percent fee from the seller, he or she passes 20 percent of it on to the buyer in the form of a refund check. So on a $1 million apartment, a customer would receive a check for $6,000.

The other option the brokerage offers is a flat fee service, in which the client finds the apartment on his own on CondoDomain and other sites, then hires a CondoDomain broker to handle the negotiations and closing, all for a fee of $10,000.

For a $1 million listing, for example, the customer would receive a check for $20,000 from the broker.

The business model works, Longo said, because the company's infrastructure is all online, so its overhead is much lower than a traditional brokerage. The company has office space, but not the expensive storefront space many brokerages rely on to attract walk-in traffic.

"We've created efficient technology," he said. "One hundred percent of our clients come from online. We don't need any retail offices." ...CONTINUED

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