"What Viva does is it gives us a tremendous source of qualifiedrental leads," says Doug Crocker, CEO at Equity Residential. "A lotof Internet traffic is just information surfing and it's hard toknow which leads are qualified." The reason Viva can supply suchhigh quality leads to apartment owners, according to Viva CEO andco-founder Scott Ingraham, is that its system allows theprospective renter to put his/her requirements out for bid. "Youknow when someone is willing to go through this process that theyhave a degree of seriousness about doing a transaction," saysCrocker.

Ingraham says that his competitors, which include Apartments.comand Springstreet.com, don't provide the same degree ofinteractivity that Viva does with prospective tenants. Because upto 40% of all prospective tenants are expected to use the Internetto search for apartments by 2003, Crocker says that the digitaldialog Viva fosters with potential tenants will be extremelyvaluable. He says it was Viva's ability to nurture this dialog thatwas a key reason the seven REITs chose Viva.

Equity Residential and the other REIT partners have been givenan incentive to use the Viva system to do rental transactions.Monday's deal with Viva includes equity warrants that will beissued based on a given REIT's transaction volume contribution tothe Viva network, according to Crocker.