BAREFOOT BEACH NAPLES/FLORIDA

ARTICLE IN NAPLES DAILY NEWS

Firm uses latest technology in global real estate sales

"This is a disaster," said Zarin Gurwicz-Dharsi, a Realtor Associate with Resort Immobilien Realty Corp. She had discovered that her fax was not automatically answering the calls. The firm is a good example how the use of new technologies can help the real estate business.

"In our business, we rely heavily on the fax machine, the computer and the mobile telephone," said Klaus Gurwicz, company broker. "When I lost my electronic organizer (it slipped out of my jacket when stored in the overhead compartment during a flight), I lost almost all I needed. I lost my schedules and appointments, and I lost my useful notes, like how to convert Fahrenheit into Centigrade."

Resort Immobilien Realty Corp., with offices in Naples and Frankfurt, Germany, focuses on international clients. "In my first life I was in marketing positions with computer companies. We sold American brand computers to Europeans. Now we use any possible technology to get our own business done," Gurwicz said. More than 60 percent of the requests for information received by the company are by fax or electronic mail, Gurwicz-Dharsi said, and more than 75 percent of the firm's contracts are settled by fax.

"In addition to our ads in Naples Daily News, we advertise in European magazines and newspapers, and we also place classified ads and messages in America Online and CompuServe, two on-line information service companies" she said. "Consequently, we receive the lion's share of the requests from international customers by fax or E-mail."

The company is also on the Internet. You can find the sales and rental listings of Resort Immobilien Realty Corp. on the Worldwide Web under “http://www.usa-home.com”. If clients ask for more information, pictures, floor plans or maps, we can get it in minutes on the Internet and they can access the colored pictures, drawings and even sound immediately from any place in the world.

While on a trip to Europe, they sold their own property in Naples by fax to a couple in the Chicago area. The letter with the original contracts arrived at the Frankfurt office weeks later, after the closing had taken place." The letter was insufficiently stamped and came by surface/sea and not by air," Gurwicz-Dharsi said. "Recently we received a letter from London which was first sent to Naples, Italy." She added that without computers and faxes their business would difficult to run. They would not be able to utilize the Multiple Listing Service or get the current currency rates, check flight availabilities or get current news from foreign sources.

"Today, you can do almost everything on-line," she said. "We can make credit checks on renters before renting out property, get the address by only knowing the phone number, and use on-line banking with bank institutions in Europe." Technology helps to get deposits transferred - it takes only two working days to wire funds, such as German marks in a Bank in Heidelberg converted to dollars and deposit in a Florida bank escrow account.

Technology also means customer can reach their sales person at Resort Immobilien Realty Corp. seven days a week, 16 hours a day. A call to the office may be forwarded to a mobile phone anywhere in the United States. "It's a nice service for the customers to get somebody speaking the same language on the phone, even on a Sunday," Gurwicz-Dharsi said. Resort Immobilien Realty Corp. can be reached on the Internet, or by phone 239-947-4990.