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Trader Dave
ENTREPRENEUR by Mark Gordon | Managing Editor
A computer guru doubling as a homeowner tries to trade in the real estate slump.
David Moskowitz has always been known as the computer guy, be it working independently on a programming project or as consultant to GE, where he once created a software program Jack Welch later bragged about on "60 Minutes."
Moskowitz is the guy who builds the Web sites, sets up the firewall protections and fixes the e-mail.
His high-tech roles, though, have yet to include matchmaker. That was until the slumping Gulf Coast real estate market confronted him.
Moskowitz, whose day job the past few years has been running Infoblazer, a Sarasota-based software development and computer consulting firm he founded, has also been spending the past year or so trying to sell his house in Nokomis, about 15 miles south of downtown Sarasota.
No surprise, in the current market, he hasn't fared too well. In response, Moskowitz used his computer skills to create a Web site for people who want to exchange a home, as opposed to buying or selling one. People such as himself - he hopes to trade his home for a downtown Sarasota condo.
Call it an MLS for the truly upwardly mobile set. "This model is essentially no different than a dating service," says Moskowitz, who earned a bachelor's and a Master's degree in civil engineering and computer science from Carnegie Mellon University. "It's an idea whose time has come."
The site, www.domuswap.com, works like this: A homeowner, or even a landowner or developer, enters the basics of a property into the site - information such as the address, bedrooms, square footage and unique features. A user can even provide a link to an external site, such as the property's MLS or Realtors' listing.
A user then enters the data for his ideal swap, criteria such as how big, how old and how many bedrooms his target home has.
Then the site, which so far is free to all users, does the rest of the work, just like a dating Web site. It has four matchmaking moments: matches, which sends registered users the homes and properties that match their pre-entered swap criteria; seekers, which sends a user contact information of other users looking for a similar house; connections, which connects two users with matching swap criteria, say a downsizing couple with a growing family; and extended, which tries to set up multi-party swaps.
Moskowitz, 40, created the site earlier this year after spending six months coming up with the programs to run it. He debuted it at a Realtor's trade show in Sarasota in May, telling agents he thinks of the site as complimentary, not competitive. The site will expand a sellers' potential market, says Moskowitz and the only site he's found that's comparable is www.ree.com, for real estate exchange, which was designed more for commercial properties.
Domuswap, which gets its name from the Latin word domicile, for home, has grown in spurts. As of the mid-July, the site only had about 25 total listings, almost all of them in Florida. But as of Sept. 4, the site had 182 listings, including ones in Arizona, California and Maryland.
And in Florida, the listings were diverse, from quarter- and half-acre land plots in Punta Gorda and New Port Richey selling for under $50,000 to a three-bedroom, 1,900-square-foot condo in Naples listed at $335,000 to a $3.85 million, 5,600-square-foot mansion with four bedrooms and three bedrooms on Little Sarasota Bay. There are listings on the state's east coast and Panhandle area, too.
While the listings on the site have grown, it's unclear how many, if any, users have actually completed a trade. Moskowitz says he hasn't heard any success stories yet, and a request from a user on the Web site's forum page looking for information on the logistics of actually doing a trade has gone unanswered.
Still, Moskowitz, who grew up in New York City and has lived in Sarasota for 10 years, says the recent listings spurt has him thinking maybe he could turn it into a profitable business one day, by charging for listings and expanded services, as well as advertising. He hopes to develop a following, a track record of success and then, maybe, investors will follow.
Moskowitz is also still hoping his original reason for creating the site - to trade his home for another one - will be realized.
"Trading can put people in a better position," he says. "Everybody has a price."
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