|
The new service, called Real Estate With Honors, will launch early this spring in time to meet the influx of new students and faculty who will be looking for housing this summer.
“UNMC is excited to use this new system to help make the search for off-campus housing easy, fun and informative,” said Deb Thomas, assistant vice chancellor of business and finance. “Real Estate With Honors will help students and staff learn about living off campus, save time in their property search and make the overall process of finding housing less stressful.”
Off-campus housing needs of the UNMC community are diverse, Thomas said. To better meet these needs, Real Estate With Honors will include a wide variety of property types, locations, price ranges and sizes. Housing options from all across the Omaha metro, including apartment complexes, houses for sale and rent, condos, university residences and even short-term furnished housing will be located on one Web site dedicated to the UNMC off-campus market.
“Most students cannot make several trips to Omaha looking for housing,” said Keith Swarts, UNMC director of business services. “These students, especially international students and students from afar, need a good system to search and sort off-campus listings by price, availability, distance to campus and number of bedrooms.”
Swarts said the service also lets users inquire about listings and schedule showings through Web-based forms.
“This saves having to make a bunch of long-distance phone calls, and it allows people to be more focused in their house-hunting,” he said. “This is just the kind of service we’ve needed at UNMC.”
The online property displays will include photos, detailed descriptions of the properties and their amenities and contact information. Users can even e-mail listings to parents or spouses for their input, Swarts said.
Additional state-of-the-art Web technology will provide bird’s-eye views and 3D mapping tools to give the user detailed impressions of each property.
“Our goal is to help take away some of the anxiety and hassle required to find housing in the Omaha area,” said David Nelson, president of Crew Innovations, Inc. “This new system will give users the ability to ‘fly’ 360 degrees around a listing, all the way down to street level.”
|
|
“The Cleveland Clinic offered a similar service when my husband (UNMC neurosurgeon William Thorell, M.D.) and I moved there in 2002 for Bill’s endovascular fellowship,” said Angie Thorell, vice president for SCORR, an Omaha marketing firm. “It was quite beneficial to us. We were able to understand some of the city dynamics, feel confident about the commute to the hospital and live in a neighborhood where other fellow physicians were living. It alleviated some of the stress of the transition and, ultimately, allowed us to connect and make new friends.
“Our past experience would lead us to believe that this service will be a real benefit to people who are moving to Omaha to work or go to school at UNMC.”
The Web site will include educational information for first-time buyers and renters, Thomas said, such as off-campus safety and crime prevention articles and a real estate education blog. Links to Omaha Police Department crime statistics, U.S. Census Bureau demographic data and Omaha-area travel and tourism also will be included on the Web site.
Real Estate With Honors is a private listing service, she said. Real estate professionals, property managers, and individual owners who promote their listings and contact information on the site must first meet certain qualifications. These qualifications will include an application, due diligence, reference checks and a personal interview on campus.
Those who are accepted as participants will load and manage their own listings and pay an annual fee to Crew Innovations, Inc. to help defray the cost of the service. A portion of the listing service revenue will fund UNMC off-campus programs such as Safe Night Out events, educational workshops, campus safety presentations and housing fairs.
Thomas stressed that use of the Real Estate With Honors Web site will be free to anyone searching for properties to rent or buy.