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COPYRIGHT 2007 Chicago Tribune
Byline: Mary Umberger
CHICAGO _ Find your next home on YouTube.
That's the latest promise of the phenomenally popular Internet video site and its brethren, where, in addition to viewing such cultural treasures as wedding bloopers and clips from "The Simpsons," you can shop for real estate these days.
From slick, cinematic productions touting waterfront castles to underlit, homemade tours of modest condos, real-estate marketers are eyeing online video as the next way to capture that increasingly elusive creature, the homebuyer.
"I was thinking about that somebody who's just scrolling through (video sites) late at night and types in the words `real estate' and `Chicago' and says, `Let's see what pops up,'" said Dina Davis, a Coldwell Banker agent in Evanston, Ill., who made a video of a townhouse listing and stuck it on YouTube.com.
After two months and a paltry 45 viewings, the townhouse is still available.
"I didn't think we'd get tons of business from it," Davis said. "It's another avenue, another option for marketing. I just hoped to pique someone's...
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