We hear often that companies, particularly Internet start ups, cannot
afford to spend the resources to redesign and ensure that their web pages
are accessible.  Consider the article below that describes some of the
houses bought by the dot com set.

kelly

the Wall Street Journal
   September 24, 1999

Home Front
Internet Moguls Snap Up
Some Featured Properties

   By FELICIA PAIK
   Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

   Sixty-two years ago, a sprawling mansion in Atlanta's Buckhead
   district was built for someone who symbolized the uber-elite of the
   day: an heir to the Coca-Cola fortune.

   Now, a new buyer of the property personifies the kind of wealth
   fueling the luxury real-estate market today: a 29-year-old Internet
   mogul.

   Jeffrey Arnold, creator of WebMD Inc., a Web site featuring medical
   information, plunked down $3.9 million for the six-acre spread. The
   purchase made him the first new-media millionaire to buy a property
   that has appeared as a Weekend Journal "House of the Week" -- a
   feature that has been running for four years.
   [Atlanta, Ga. manse]
   One of the 'House of the Week' properties that was sold in the four
   years the column has run. Atlanta, Georgia.

   "The dot-com moguls are really driving the high-end segment these
   days," says Cecelia Waeschle, a broker in Beverly Hills, Calif., who
   now refers to movie-studio buyers as "paupers by comparison."

   In fact, an analysis of "House of the Week" sales recorded during the
   past six months shows Mr. Arnold isn't alone among new-media buyers.
   Two others also snapped up featured properties during the period, also
   in towns not traditionally associated with the technology rush. Daniel
   Borislow, founder of online long-distance provider Tel-Save Holdings
   Inc., now known as Talk.com Inc., picked up a villa in Palm Beach,
   Fla., while Jeffrey Mallett, president of Yahoo! Inc., bought a house
   with its own golf course in California's Napa Valley.

   With the Internet initial-public-offering boom still in force,
   real-estate experts predict the trend will continue across the
   country. "Windfall money from the stock market is having a remarkable
   effect," says John Karevoll, a housing analyst with Acxiom Corp.'s
   DataQuick products division.

   In sum, during the latest six-month period of March through September,
   a total of 16 "House of the Week" properties have sold, nearly tying
   the record of 17 set during the comparable year-ago period. In
   addition, five other featured homes are under contract. The rapid pace
   of sales -- albeit in this rarefied world of $1 million-plus
   properties featured by the Journal -- indicates that the high-end
   market is holding strong.

   Of the 16 properties, 12 sold for at least as much as the Journal's
   "opening offer" -- our estimate of a reasonable starting point for
   price negotiations -- while just three sold for less than that figure.
   (In one case, the figure couldn't be determined.) Still, there isn't
   any evidence that the super-luxury segment has become superheated, as
   no house sold for more than its asking price. In fact, since the
   launch of the column, no "House of the Week" has ever sold for more
   than the asking price, though four have sold for the asking price --
   two during this period alone.

   What's more, even in this time of rising real-estate values across all
   market segments, some asking prices are simply too high. Mr. Arnold's
   Atlanta mansion had languished on the market for four years at what
   proved to be an audacious asking price of $12.5 million -- more than
   three times what the Net executive eventually paid. When the
   14,000-square-foot residence appeared in the Journal on Sept. 8, 1995
   -- as our inaugural "House of the Week" -- brokers said the price was
   "high," even considering that Clark Gable slept at the house during
   the 1939 premiere of "Gone With the Wind." (Then again, so was our
   "opening offer" of $9 million.)

   Mr. Arnold bought the property in June in a bank sale, a month after
   his WebMd agreed to merge in a $9.8 billion deal with Healtheon Corp.,
   a Santa Clara, Calif., company specializing in medical-transaction
   processing. The seller was NationsBank Corp., which in March 1998
   foreclosed on the property previously owned by Atlanta investor Johnny
   Imerman; Coldwell Banker Previews in Buckhead represented the bank in
   the sale. The estate, with a sweeping grass lawn and white columns
   reminiscent of Tara, was originally built for Coca-Cola heir Hugh
   Pendleton Nunnally.

   Mr. Borislow, the Talk.com founder, also paid significantly less than
   the asking price when he bought his Palm Beach home in June. The owner
   wanted $14.5 million for the 10,000-square-foot beachfront property;
   the Net executive got it for $12.5 million.

   Among other notable "House of the Week" sales during the past six
   months: Tommy Mottola, chairman of Sony Corp.'s Sony Music
   Entertainment unit, sold his 9,000-square-foot vacation home in North
   Haven, in New York's trendy Hamptons area, for $8.6 million; and a
   penthouse in New York's famed Cafe des Artistes building sold in July
   for an undisclosed amount.
     _________________________________________________________________


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