But according to Realtor Magazine, the official trade journal of the National Association of Realtors, technology has changed the perception of who rules this $1 trillion industry and has played a huge role in catapulting a few relative newcomers to the top.

The magazine compiled its list from more than 100 candidates that it didn’t rate in any particular order. The telling factor was the fact that it includes nearly a dozen people whose businesses are hitched to the internet technology wagon.

Stuart Wolff, who was virtually unheard of in the real estate industry five years ago, is the hands down front-runner for leading what has become online real estate’s biggest internet success story, Homestore.com. Homestore operates NAR’s Realtor.com Web site as well as Homebuilder.com, Springstreet and Move.com.

High on the list is J. Lennox Scott, president of Bellevue-based of John L. Scott Real Estate. His company operates five offices in Kitsap County that are among the perennial leaders in local sales volume. Scott was credited by Realtor Magazine with helping the real estate industry “migrate... onto the Internet.

Ian Morris, HomeAdvisor Technologies’ product unit manager made the list for his role with Microsoft’s HomeAdvisor real estate portal. Homebid.com Chairman and CEO Kevin Hickey was credited for building one of the first real estate auction Web sites, and Joe Hanauer was honored for putting together a deal between NAR, Homestore.com, LoopNet and several large commercial realty firms to create CommercialSource.com.

One name that strikes fear into the heart of the traditional real estate establishment however is zipRealty.com President Scott Kucirek. His company has integrated regular real estate brokerage services with the Internet and provides discounts to buyers and sellers. The company operates here in the Northwest as well as the Bay area in California and is moving rapidly into other markets across the country.
Michael Russer, owner of Santa Barbara, Calif.-based People-Centric is known as “Mr. Internet.” Russer was hailed in part for developing what became the content for NAR’s e-Pro certification courses. Law professor Patrick A. Randolph Jr., publisher of Dirt, an influential email listserv read by about 4,000 top real estate lawyers, brokers and legislators made the list as did LoopNet founder and CEO Dennis DeAndre, who was credited with building the Internet’s largest commercial property database.
SOMA Living President Karl Sopke was cited for marrying Web technology with a “high touch” retail business model for selling San Francisco real estate.
A number of other industry leaders also made the magazine’s list.
Most notably was Dallas Realtor Ebby Halliday, who the magazine called “the icon for women in real estate.” She was credited for her outright domination of the Dallas market.
Current NAR President Dennis Cronk made the list for his efforts to expend “members’ opportunities in international real estate” and for visiting China as chairman of an international trade delegation.
Equity Group Investments Chairman Sam Zell, a towering figure in commercial real estate, also was mentioned as were U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Andrew Cuomo, Fannie Mae chairman Franklin Raines, next year’s NAR president, Richard Mendenhall and well known real estate trainers Mike Ferry and Floyd Wickman.
Realtor Magazine noted the criteria for the list had nothing to do with profits or productivity, but was based on suggestions from “select brokers, association executives and industry watchers” of people “within the industry who moved it in new directions.”
Readers were also asked to weigh in with their choices for most influential. That list, which can be found on NAR’s OneRealtorPlace Web site, includes a slew of local real estate brokers, company presidents and dot-com CEOs.