RESPOND LAUNCHES NEXT GENERATION REAL ESTATE MARKETPLACE Also opens Houston office to accommodate growth

April 20, 2006 (PRLEAP.COM) Technology News
April 20, 2006 – HOUSTON, TX - Respond (www.respond.com), the leading online lead referral service that connects purchase-ready buyers with local sellers, today announced that it has launched AGENTS.NET, a next-generation real estate marketplace, and opened a new office in Houston to accommodate growth. The developers of BIDAGENTS, Houston-based Hunt & Harvest, Inc., join Respond to produce a new era of electronic interaction between real estate buyers, sellers and agents with AGENTS.NET on April 18, 2006.

AGENTS.NET builds on Respond’s community of over 3 million members. Since 1998, Respond has been helping consumers save time, money and energy in their search for qualified service providers such as wedding photographers, remodeling contractors, caterers and numerous other professionals. In the process, Respond has been providing local service professionals with the best use of their advertising dollar by connecting them to purchase-ready customers in real time. Respond is a pay for performance service revolutionizing the interactive yellow pages, directory and lead generation industry. Their rich content includes customer reviews in addition to work samples, FAQ’s, personalized responses and host of other qualifications for customers to review and merchants to market themselves.

The AGENTS.NET website allows interested buyers and sellers to rapidly screen a wide range of real estate professionals based on their qualifications and company profile. The web site also provides real estate agents with prescreened, targeted and qualified leads, while delivering consumers multiple agents to evaluate and select. AGENTS.NET will continue to roll out new offerings, tools and value added functionality such as the integration of BIDAGENTS, a platform that will allow consumers to negotiate real estate commissions with agents.

“I am truly excited about opening of the Houston office, the launch of AGENTS.NET and the team we have assigned to pioneer its emergence,” stated Atul Jain, Chairman and CEO of TEOCO, the parent company of Respond. “I am confident that AGENTS.NET will build on Respond's reputation as a company known for its relentless focus on maintaining the integrity and quality of the leads generated.”

"We developed BIDAGENTS with the intention of empowering the consumer and catapulting the real estate marketplace into the digital economy. We recognized that even with the advent of technology and increased information readily available to consumers, the real estate industry has been stuck in conventional methods,” said Jitin Ahuja, Director of AGENTS.NET. “By joining forces with Respond, we have an opportunity to leverage their reputation, technology platform and member base to bring BIDAGENTS to the marketplace.”

Visit AGENTS.NET to realize the benefits of a real estate market place that answers the needs of today’s consumers and tomorrow’s agents.

ABOUT RESPOND

Respond is the leading online lead referral service that connects purchase-ready buyers with local sellers. Since 1999, over three million consumers have used Respond to find everything from banquet facilities to business loans. Today, Respond covers over 100 types of services and drives quality leads to entrepreneurial small businesses. Respond has been a line of business of TEOCO Corporation since 2002.

TEOCO is widely recognized for its commitment to Principled Entrepreneurship with a particular emphasis on its core values of alignment with employees, clients and community. See more at www.teoco.com.