By Diane Phillips

A leading international luxury market real estate association has voted Bahamas Realty website number one for 2006, ranking it top in a field of 1,100 members in a competition that included many of the world's most exclusive firms.

The honour, awarded in Chicago during the closing ceremony of the 11th Annual Luxury Real Estate Member-ship Conference, took Bahamas Realty CEO Larry Roberts by surprise.

"To win this award in a global arena in competition with the who's who of luxury real estate brokers and offices, to be singled out in this kind of exclusive high-end market competition, is really quite an honour," said Roberts, a second generation realtor whose father founded the firm in 1949.

Bahamas Realty was first to introduce web marketing as a sales tool for property in The Bahamas. That was in the early 1990s he says, adding that a little more than a decade later, reliance on the internet for information has grown so fast that there is no way to overstate how great a role it plays.

"In today's real estate market, your competitor is a click away," explains Roberts, who also sees the Internet impact as president of the Bahamas Real Estate Association.

Information about The Bahamas positions the country's real estate offerings relative to other markets. And it is not just the number of new sites appearing that is stunning – the quality of web sites has improved as dramatically as the use of them has exploded, Roberts said.

"In the web world there are so many very clever people out there who are designing web sites. And in the real estate industry there's a tremendous amount of competition in terms of how you present a website or the friendliness of the website for someone who doesn't know that much about navigating.

"The other challenge is once you get them there, how do you keep them there? I've seen estimates putting average web site attention span at nine seconds, comparing it to the attention span of a goldfish," he says.

Holding a web surfer's attention is what the industry calls the 'stickiness factor.' Whatever creates it, the Bahamas Realty site must have it, according to the panel who voted www.

bahamasrealty.bs number one. The new site, designed by Luxuryrealestate.com, is clean, appealing and easy to move around in, each page framed by inviting images – a wooden dinghy pulled up on an uninhabited beach, wine glasses on a table at sunset.

The home page offers a featured listing which changes frequently. Each section within the site is packed with information on individual islands from size and population to links for accommodations, dining and activities along with properties available for sale, rent or commercial development.

There's a complete profile on investment incentives and on the company itself whose international affiliations include Board of Regents, Luxury Real Estate, Leading Real Estate Companies of the World, Luxury Portfolio and Savills.

This is the second time in the past year that Bahamas Realty has been recognised for outstanding achievement.

Earlier in the year, Roberts along with Managing Partner Mario Carey became the first two real estate brokers in The Bahamas to qualify for the prestigious Certified Luxury Home Marketing Specialist designation.

Ironically, Roberts nearly missed the awards ceremony in Chicago.

"I had not planned to attend the awards ceremony. It was the last evening of the conference," he said, "and I had promised my wife we would go out for a nice dinner. I made reservations at a very special place and was crossing the lobby when someone from the conference said, 'See you tonight.' I explained I would not be there and he said, 'You need to be there. I can't tell you any more than that, but you need to be there.' I'm so glad I was – and so was my wife."

BEST WEBSITE AWARD – Bahamas Realty CEO Larry Roberts(left) accepts an award for the firm after a luxury market association voted it number one for 2006, ranking it top in a field of 1,100 members, including many of the world's most exclusive firms. Presenting the award in Chicago is John Brian Losh, publisher of Who's Who in Luxury Real Estate.

(Photo by Mary Doherty, Peabody & Smith)