US Realtors move to place property listings on new global portal showing properties in viewer's choice of 12 languages

Warsaw, Poland -- (January 25, 2001) -- Persons speaking a language other than English are having a growing impact on the US residential market. In 1997, over $1 billion was spent by foreign nationals on US Real Estate. Two thirds of all new households formed in the US over the next decade will be formed by minorities, and this group will be one of the chief drivers in the US home ownership market. (Realtor Association Executive, Summer 2000)

One third of the US population will be minorities, by the year 2010. Now the minority share is 28%, and this increase will be entirely due to a continued influx of immigrants to the US. (Joint Center for Housing Studies, Harvard University)

Combine these statistics with the fact, that this year, the number of non-English speaking internet users will pass English speaking users, and you have a wake up call to an industry that has really come to depend on the internet.

With 40% of both buyers and sellers using the Internet in their decision making process, the inability to reach these significant client groups with English language on-line listings has left many a realtor sidelined from these lucrative markets.

This language barrier has now been broken by immobel.com with their platform which allows property listings to be viewed in the client's choice of 12 languages. Properties can be viewed in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, German, Polish, Russian, Chinese modern, Chinese traditional, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese.

Property listings can be placed on the portal from any of those languages as well, which means that French properties can be viewed in English, Florida properties can be viewed in German, San Francisco properties can be seen in Chinese, and so on around the world.

US Realtors were quick to see the opportunity. At the National Association of Realtors (NAR) conference in November, agreements were signed to place more than 100,000 US properties on the immobel.com portal.

Immobel.com founder and CEO, Janet Choynowski said " we have been pleased to see that American Realtors really understand and appreciate our products" Ms. Choynowski may be reached via telephone at: 1 305 495 4875 or via email at: jchoynowski@immobel.com