(The Johns Creek Herald. Page 10. January 8-14, 2003)
By GEOFF SMITH geoff@northfulton.com
Out here in the suburbs, the subdivisions and gated neighborhoods tend to characterize one’s community. And in that concept, Johns Creek residents Jeff and Susan Sanders have found a market.
Their business, AtHomeNet, creates Web pages specifically for homeowners associations. The idea has caught on and they now have clients from Seattle, Wash. to Miami, Fla.
The Sanders thought of the concept while sitting in Atlanta traffic – driving back and forth to their jobs downtown. Jeff was a computer programmer and systems analyst in the financial services industry, and Susan worked in business management and sales. The husband and wife team complement each other and Jeff handles the nuts and bolts of the operation while Susan keeps the work coming in. Both said they feel like their service brings neighbors together.
“We didn’t know many of the people in our community,” Susan said. “With this service, everyone has a sort of home base they can refer to.”
When AtHomeNet began, there was not a lot of competition – not many Web designers specialized in homeowners associations, which is something Jeff and Susan said makes them experts in the field.
“Our format is always changing,” Jeff said. “In four years we have gotten a lot of suggestions from different clients, and we keep adding services that work better for the homeowners associations.”
AtHomeNet offers a basic template from which homeowners can add a variety of bells and whistles. Associations pay a start-up fee of $50, and a monthly fee that starts at $35 and goes up according to the number of services added.
Jeff and Susan began marketing their service to communities in Atlanta in 1998, and expanded to associations across the country. Many of their clients they have only met over the phone. They maintain 600 Web sites, and have clients in Hawaii and Alaska.
By the way, the best states to market homeowners association services – California and Florida. “They have by far the most homeowners associations,” Susan said.
AtHomeNet’s sites are interactive, and Jeff says they are driven by an underlying database and created by the neighborhood. Members of the community are able to put pictures on the site, advertise services like babysitting or yard maintenance, or post announcements such as changes to neighborhood policy, or birth and death notices. The pages can advertise and offer information to outsiders, and residents are given access codes so they can get to pages offered only to them.
“Through the site, they can post something they want to say, or use the site to send an email to everyone in the neighborhood,” Jeff said.
“It’s a lot faster than having to call every single home,” said Susan.
AtHomeNet claims many local subdivisions as clients including Country Club of the South, Laurel Springs and Windward. Most of its clients come from cold calls to association board members, others find AtHomeNet on the Web, and many are found at homeowners’ association trade shows.
“At some of those shows it’s the first time we get to actually see some of our clients,” Susan said.
For information on AtHomeNet, log onto its Web site at www.AtHomeNet.com. or call 800-556-7852.
The Johns Creek Herald. Page 10. January 8-14, 2003.
