mikelongletter

Letter to REALTORS®from Homestore CEO Mike Long
Feb. 20, 2002


Dear REALTOR®,

I am writing to introduce myself as the new CEO of Homestore. We, at Homestore, have a long-standing partnership with the National Association of REALTORS® to bring you REALTOR.com®, the largest and most comprehensive site on the Internet designed exclusively to keep you, the REALTOR®, at the center of the homeownership process. In my first 30 days with Homestore, Steve Ozonian, President of REALTOR.com®, and I have traveled more than 20,000 miles meeting with and listening to hundreds of customers. We want to thank those of you who have taken your time to meet with us and look forward to meeting many more of you in the weeks ahead. You have shared with us the successes of REALTOR.com®, the mistakes a fast-growing company like Homestore has made, and also some great ideas about how we can change to serve you better. Especially, thank you for your offer of continued future support.

Last week we implemented a new organization designed to place you, our customer, at the center of all we do. This week we will announce our Customer Advocacy Program, which will make employees throughout our company responsible for directly contacting our customers, understanding their needs, and keeping the entire company focused on meeting those needs. In addition, we are eliminating businesses that do not support our focused objective of making real estate professionals more productive and profitable.

These changes have strengthened our company. We recently reported that we expect our cash flow from operations to be positive for the full year 2002 and that we had cash available to fund operations of $48 million at December 31, 2001, in addition to restricted cash of approximately $100 million. I am delighted that in a challenging economic climate where so many companies are having financial difficulties, we have the financial resources to meet our customer commitments and fund the growth of our business.

I am personally committed to make our products and services more useful to you, to make our business practices meet your needs more effectively, and to be the reliable partner you deserve. We'd like to hear how we are doing. Please contact me at mlong@REALTOR.com, or Steve at sozonian@REALTOR.com, and let us know how we can serve you better.

Thank you for your continued support.

Mike Long
CEO, Homestore