BY THERESE POLETTI
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS

When former entertainment industry executive Catherine Marcus was selling her home in Atherton, Calif., at the height of the technology boom, she grew incredibly frustrated when her real estate agent was not prompt at returning e-mails or phone calls.

"I could never get hold of him; he would never check e-mail," said Marcus, who has since become a top-performing real estate agent at Sotheby's International. "When smart people are making the biggest acquisition of their life, they want to deal with smart people who are the most competent to get the job done."

Marcus' experience led her to investigate the possibilities of a career in real estate. She found that her knowledge of technology was an asset in a business that is still to a large extent technophobic.

Consumers now have more tools in real estate transactions -- with information and calculators available to them on the Internet and a proliferation of mobile technology -- and have forced the real estate industry to become more tech savvy.

"The demand from consumers is overwhelming," said Brad Inman, the publisher of Inman News and founder of HomeGain, both based in Emeryville, Calif. "If you are not using technology, you are not talking to the consumer."

According to a report issued by the California Association of Realtors in March, almost two-thirds of first-time home buyers used the Internet as a first step in their quest.

"It was a big secret book that no one could get their hands on," Inman said. "That whole thing has imploded and it's on the Internet. That is incredible."

As a result, the role of the agent is changing from the keeper of the data to a strategist, psychologist and even more of an uber salesperson. Analysts and executives said there are still agents who are afraid of and unfamiliar with technology, and eventually, this could hurt their business.

"It's as if an agent picked you up to see a home in a stagecoach and they said, 'I'm very automobile illiterate,' " said Marc Davison, vice president of corporate development for VREO Software in San Luis Obispo, Calif. The company develops real estate systems, software, services and tablet PCs.

The real estate agents who use technology find that they have gained an edge.

With so many consumers using the Internet to peruse listings, find recent home sale prices, research a neighborhood and shop for mortgages, some agents now see it as a key marketing tool for themselves and their properties.

Those who are Web savvy also use digital cameras to post photos and create virtual tours of the properties for sale. Others use target marketing with ads to reach consumers via search engines such as Google or Yahoo. Many sign up their clients to receive automatic listing updates from the MLS, and the most advanced are experimenting with digitizing some of the documents involved in the hugely paper-intensive process of closing the purchase.

Faramarz Rashed, a software development manager at a Silicon Valley company, said he used the Internet to sell his home and buy another.

"It was 100% of the equation. In this day and age, you don't have that much time after work to go and search for properties," Rashed said. This past spring, Rashed sold a three-bedroom home in San Jose for $780,000 and his family upgraded to a larger home in Los Gatos. Rashed sold his home for more than other recent sales in his area, a fact he attributed to research done by his agent, Kirsten Reilly of Intero in Saratoga, Calif..

Davison said real estate agents are not an endangered species if they provide a real service to consumers.

"What I think is endangered is any group of business people that doesn't pay heed to the changing shifts of the American consumer," he said.

There's no yellow brick road in Milford, but it won't be difficult to find the homes featured in the village's 29th annual home tour this weekend. See Suzette Hackney's column in Friday Real Estate.