Insignia and J.P. Morgan Have Joined the Waves of Businesses Turning to E-Technology Initiatives

NEW YORK CITY-CapitalThinking Inc., a New York-based company that originally marketed itself as an online brokerage, is now no longer accepting deal inquiries and has redesigned its Web site to proclaim itself a purveyor of software. J.P. Morgan Mortgage Capital Inc., a subsidiary of New York-based J.P. Morgan, has signed on as the first customer for these new services. At the same time, New York’s Insignia Financial Group has signed on with Project Octane, the transaction platform of an alliance of real estate giants. These developments follow on the heels of a busy summer of new e-technology initiatives and projects that are revolutionizing the way the real estate business manages its transactions.

Over the summer a wave of announcements about companies offering new infrastructures and forming new initiatives and the integration of these by major real estate companies were made. One such announcement came in August as Insignia Financial Group’s subsidiary Douglas Elliman formed a joint venture with the Corcoran Group to develop a multiple listing system for Manhattan. The system would attempt to centralize the residential brokerage community through one Web site. Halstead Property Company also committed to becoming a member of the project. The MSL is scheduled to be up and open for new members in early 2001.

Insignia followed this announcement in late September with news that it was opening a retail business, through its Realty One group, that would act as an information center where customers could surf the Internet in a cyber café-like environment. The new virtual resource bank real estate office is in the warehouse district of Cleveland. The new office will serve as a testing ground for the prototype business and will spread across the country if successful.