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That's 17 percent of all serious inquiries and virtually all come from out of state.
"We've seen a lot more activity in the last six months," Brown said. "It tell us that our [Internet] marketing is working."
At present, Clarke's Web site is listing apartments at no cost. Within the next 60 days, Clarke plans to begin charging a fee of $45 month. If an apartment owner pays for one year in advance, there's a 10 percent discount.
The fee could reduce the number of properties in his database because not all owners may be willing to spend money. "I don't think most of them will think twice about trying it out," Clarke said. "The cost is only $480, while average rent today is $550. It pays for itself just by bringing in that one tenant."
The Web site opened on July 4 and over the holiday weekend, Clarke said it took from 400 to 800 hits a day. Four people from out of state filled out a questionnaire included at the site.
NM Apartments Online is linked to the state's major business, real estate and chamber of commerce Web sites. It is also linked to most major search engines under such key words as "apartments, New Mexico", and city names.
Once you get to the Web site, an apartment hunter has the option of browsing or searching. "A tenant can search for just about anything," Clarke said. "They can search for a range in rental rates, number of bedrooms or whether an [apartment] community has tennis courts."
A search will produce a straightforward listing of apartment properties with basic information such an address, telephone number, rent square footage and number of bedrooms and bathrooms.
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Apartment hunters can put down their newspapers and park their cars.
Now they can find NM Apartments Online on the Internet and, with a couple clicks of their computer mouse, get detailed information on 776 properties with more than 75,000 units in 42 communities from Albuquerque and El Paso to Quemado and Santa Rosa.
The database dwarfs any other apartment guide, whether online or published, in the state.
NM Apartments Online is the brainchild of Todd Clarke, a commercial real estate broker and computer techie. His database is a byproduct of seven years of research and fact collection that originally was used to support his work as one of Albuquerque's top apartment brokers at Lewinger Hamilton Inc.
"This is an added service to the owners of the [apartments] properties," Clarke said. "Our goal is to get out in front of the apartment owners. If we provide value to the owners, then eventually we'll benefit."
The idea is to give apartment properties more exposure to potential tenants. The more people an apartment owner has checking out the property, the more likely it is that the property will have a high occupancy rate.
It's well established that the number of households going online is increasing at a phenomenal rate. At one apartment complex in Albuquerque's Far Northeast Heights, the 430-unit Pinnacle High Desert, the increase has been good for business.
Terri Brown, senior property manager with Trammel Crow Residential, said a weekly average of three to five serious renters contact Pinnacle High Desert after finding it on the Web.
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Each property listing also has a color photograph of the property.
If an apartment hunter is interested in a particular property, a click of the mouse will bring up a property profile of what is essentially a home page for the apartment complex. The profile contains information on the complex itself, such as number of units and when it was built, as well as amenities and detailed rental information.
Clarke and his partner on the online project, Cynthia Staat, had planned to get the service up and running a year ago. It was delayed, however, while Clarke served as president of two major real estate associations, the Commercial Association of Realtors New Mexico and the New Mexico Chapter of Certified Commercial Investment Members.
The web site wasn't difficult to put online. Clarke already had a site, NM Apartment Report, on the Internet promoting the sale of multifamily properties. The format of the Apartment Report was used as the basis for Apartment Online. The existing database was adjusted for apartment hunters instead of investors. Although most widely-known as a broker of Lewinger Hamilton, Clarke is offering NM Apartments Online through his own company, Todd Clarke Inc. The project is an outgrowth of his programming expertise in computers. In the current issue of Commercial Investment Real Estate Journal, the 27-year old is profiled as the ultimate "Techno-Realtor".
NM Apartments Online's Web address is http://www.nmapartment.com/nmapart.
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