The Story Behind the First Single Property Website
In the late 1990s, before Zillow, before Trulia, and before online real estate marketing became standard practice, a simple client request sparked an idea that would forever change the way properties are marketed.
The story began at a CENTURY 21 office in Santa Rosa California. Patricia Provost had been a successful real estate broker in Northern California for decades. One day, one of her top agents, Martin Levy, had a client who asked a question that was uncommon at the time:
“Can my property have its own website?”
At the time, there was no easy way to do that. Websites were expensive to build, domain names were difficult to obtain, and there was no system designed specifically for real estate professionals.
Patricia and her office manager, Glenn Gephart, began brainstorming solutions. They called Patricia’s daughter, Amanda Provost, who was attending California State University Long Beach as a film major while building websites and working as a graphic designer.
Amanda saw an opportunity.
Rather than manually creating a website for every listing, she envisioned a system that would allow agents to instantly create a dedicated website for a property using the property’s address as the domain name.
At the time, Network Solutions was the only major domain registrar, charging $35 per year with a two-year minimum registration. Amanda searched for a better solution and discovered an Australian company called PlanetDomain that offered single-year registrations and an API that could automate the domain registration process.
Working with a programmer, Amanda designed and developed a system that could automatically register a domain name and dynamically generate a website for a property.
The result was ListingDomains.com.
For the first time, real estate agents could create dedicated websites for their listings quickly and efficiently, giving every property its own online presence.
Recognizing the uniqueness of the concept, Amanda filed for a United States patent in 2001 to protect the technology and methodology of dynamically creating a website for a single property using the property’s address as the domain name.
But the innovation didn’t stop there.
Amanda realized that a website alone wasn’t enough. Buyers driving through neighborhoods needed a simple way to find these property websites. To bridge the gap between traditional real estate marketing and the internet, Properties Online introduced Domain Riders—sign riders that displayed the property’s website address and directed buyers online for photos, information, and details.
What began as a solution for a single agent’s client quickly grew into a company dedicated to helping real estate professionals market properties more effectively.
Over the next two decades, Properties Online expanded its technology platform to include lead capture systems, SMS property information services, automated video creation, single property websites, digital marketing tools, and a wide range of innovations designed specifically for real estate professionals.
Today, dedicated property websites are a standard part of real estate marketing. What began as a simple solution for a single client helped establish an entirely new category of online real estate marketing.
As the creators of the first single property website platform and holders of the original U.S. patent for the technology, we are proud of the role Properties Online has played in shaping the way properties are marketed online.
More than 25 years later, we continue to innovate, helping real estate professionals connect properties with buyers through technology, creativity, and a passion for marketing excellence.