Open house market

Finding the perfect Braintree home to accommodate three children, his wife, and his mother-in-law has been a challenge for Mark Riley. But searching for the house has been a breeze thanks to a proliferation of Internet tools that have freed buyers from total dependence on real estate agents.

Since October, the couple has walked through more than two dozen homes -- most of which they found on their own using ZipRealty.com or Realtor.com.

''We know what would work for us and what won't work for us, so we can eliminate houses quicker than the realtor," said Mark Riley. ''We know that's not going to work, as opposed to the realtor saying, 'This might work.' "

Real estate agents used to closely guard property information in bound volumes of homes for sale. Only they knew what was for sale, when it was coming to market or how long it had been on the market, and how it compared to similar properties. To size up the market, a buyer could spend many weekends being driven around by an agent viewing properties.

Today, the consumer is in the driver's seat. Using websites from Homepages.com, to Zillow.com, a growing number of home buyers -- and some cutting-edge sellers -- are able to tap into so much data that they are doing without agents.

Agents increasingly are using the Internet to retain or create relationships with buyers through websites that allow the buyers to do elaborate searches for properties and other information on their own, such as Realtor.com, an official site of the National Association of Realtors, and ZipRealty.com, an agent-affiliated website.

''We're still waiting to see where it's going, but it's definitely changing the whole industry," said Dorcas Miller, a Concord agent with ReMax Walden Country. ''The Web does a lot of the selling now, and we're doing more interpreting."

Miller used to shuttle clients to dozens of houses. Now she shows them only a handful, and she says it takes much less time to help them find the right home because they can review online photographs or ''virtual" video tours to see what a house looks like inside and out before deciding whether to visit it.

The tours, which were rare four years ago, are now part of 13 percent of Boston-area home listings and 18 percent of $1 million-plus properties, according to MLS Property Information Network, a major property database. The tours are popping up on virtually any site that features homes, including Condodomain.com, which displays luxury projects in downtown Boston; agent-sponsored sites such as Coldwell Banker's NewEnglandMoves.com; and Boston.com, the website affiliated with The Boston Globe.

Matthew Murphy, founder of Boston Virtual Imaging, said he produced several hundred tours during 2002, his first year of business, but sales grew to 1,500 tours last year. ''The use has increased exponentially," he said.

Web-savvy buyers are demanding such information nationwide. The National Association of Realtors said 77 percent of home buyers search the Web for prospects, up from 2 percent a decade ago. Its California affiliate estimated that one-third of agents' business now comes to them over the Web, rather than through traditional routes such as referrals.

Real estate agents admit that the free-for-all Internet poses a new form of competition. But even those who embrace these new tools said their role in home buying and selling is far from obsolete. After the initial search, agents are still needed to get buyers into the houses they want to view personally, help them with their bids, and do the legal work to close the deal.

Buyers who've done their own searches ''know what they like about a property, and they want to see it, so my life is a lot more efficient than it used to be," said Lee Robinson, an agent for Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage in Milton. ''We do make the whole transaction a whole lot easier, because we do know what we are doing."

ZipRealty Inc. has capitalized on this trend. In contrast to old-style agencies that created websites to advertise clients' properties, ZipRealty is a brokerage service that was built around its website in 1999. The company encourages clients to exhaustively search house listings on ZipRealty.com, which can sort them by city, ZIP code, address, or listing number. ZipRealty said comScore Media Metrix, which tracks website traffic, counted 850,000 visits to ZipRealty.com last December, a 63 percent increase from a year earlier. In July, a busy summer month, visits reached more than 1 million.

The Rileys constantly search ZipRealty.com for houses between $400,000 and $600,000. They have found it challenging to uncover a property with a yard, three bedrooms, and extra space for Denise Riley's mother on their modest household budget. He is a stand-up comedian and middle-school teacher, and she is a personal trainer.

ZipRealty automatically e-mails the couple house listings that fit their parameters, and it updates listings several times a day. But their agent at ZipRealty, David Previti, hangs back until the customer tells him what they want to view in person. Mark Riley cruises the Internet and his e-mail on his own, saving houses in a ''favorites" file for Previti to review and set up appointments.

''He takes care of that legwork," Riley said. Previti is also ''the go-between for putting in offers."

On ZipRealty's interactive map, the couple looks up houses for sale on specific Braintree streets or by neighborhood. A ''price track" feature reports on asking-price reductions. They can check out neighborhood information, too, through a ''proximity" search, which allows home buyers to search for houses near a preferred school or obtain detailed information about recent sales or the number of single, divorced, and married people living in the area.

Sellers have been more reluctant than buyers to use the Web, particularly in a softening housing market, though numerous sites permit homeowners to sell on their own. The National Association of Realtors estimates 13 percent of sellers did so last year, down from 16 percent in 1999, when the economy was booming.

Competition from the Web is changing the way agents do business in many ways. ReMax's Miller began offering clients an a la carte menu of services for sellers ''who need a little help" but ''feel they can do it themselves." For $2,000 she will list a house on the multiple listing service and give them a ''For Sale" sign and a lockbox for storing a key on the property. For $3,000, she also provides limited marketing in local newspapers or printed listing sheets.

She said the full-service brokerage that charges the standard agents' fee, up to 3 percent of a home's selling price, still represents the majority of her business. ''Most people really don't want limited service when they see what they are missing -- nice printing, virtual tours, floor plans, all the things that we traditionally put with a listing to explain it to a buyer," she said.

Don't tell that to Ellen and Anthony Petrilli. The Massachusetts couple wanted to sell their vacation cottage on Lake Winnisquam in New Hampshire but couldn't find an agent eager to take the listing. Ellen Petrilli discovered ZeroBrokerFees.com and listed the cottage on the website, which was founded on the premise that Internet traffic attracts more potential buyers than foot traffic. After a year online, the site already draws about 3,000 visitors per day, said founder and chief executive Ed Williams.

''It is a fallacy that a broker needs to shore up any real estate transaction engaged in by two people," Williams said. ''A simple attorney for a purchase-and-sale review is all you need, and a home inspection."

ZeroBrokerFees.com fees start at $49.95 to list a property with one photograph and up to $79.95 for a listing with six photos.

The Petrilli's cottage sold in three weeks in January 2005, sparking envy from neighbors who had contracts with agents.

''If you have half a brain and if you can't sell your own house where you raise a family and live and you love it," Ellen Petrilli said, ''how can someone else sell it?"

Kimberly Blanton can be reached at blanton@globe.com.